An impressive wall hanging by the master of manipulating salvaged, oriental style rugs, Noémi Kiss.

RIPPED AFGHAN is an artwork, which appears as it is torn apart. The ripping is painted in a surprisingly realistic manner creating an optical illusion. One of the hallmarks of the artist Noemi Kiss is creating trickery, wit, confusion, wonder and often a timely (social) critique with her artworks. The type of rug used is an Afghan style rug. The artwork critically refers to Afghanistan's political burden, its war-torn status and the horrors ripping through the country.

The artist Kiss has concentrated in her oeuvre on out-of-use rugs, damaged rugs, or the unwanted, where she applies her artistic interventions. She is a master in creating an impressive illusion, through overpainting or cutting the re-purposed oriental rugs. Laboriously woven or knotted by hand, oriental rugs tell stories, interwoven in the piece. The ornaments have strong meanings. A rug can be decorative furnishing, a symbol of paradise, or a placeholder for prayer. The artist uses this strong symbolism and marries it with interventions of her choice, like cutting, overpainting, or gilding.

During its lifetime a rug is traded, bought, possibly resold, used over decades by various people in various locations….layering the piece with another history of its usage. Foot-worn carpets are witnesses of their past. One cannot simply copy them. Wear and tear, this 'Design of Time' of the rug is a vital part and the basis for Noémi's artworks. Here the aesthetics are to be understood as a state of the art that cannot be produced intentionally. Such surfaces develop slowly and on their own - through human interaction and use. Noémi is a material fetishist and she lets collide the grown with the made. She loads banal substances and materials that feel distant from art with a new meaning.