Spirits in the Material World

New textile and jewellery exhibit connects cultures from 19th to 20th century

At its heart, a new exhibit at Toronto's Textile Museum of Canada is all about belief and understanding.
Out Of This World: Textiles from the Spirit Realm is a collection of more than 100 textile and jewellery designs which go beyond mere function or decoration. The objects, from the mid 19th century to the latter half of the 20th century, demonstrate how textile and jewellery designs were a means of spiritual comfort and protection for many world cultures. Given that almost half of Out Of This World is devoted to a connection between object designs and spirituality in traditional Islamic cultures, the Toronto exhibit has a topicality and timeliness related to current world events that the organizers could not have anticipated.
Co-curator Natalia Nekrassova says Out Of This World speaks to common human values, but also preserves distinctive cultures which have been compromised by the homogeneity of modern living. The beautifully conceived textile and jewellery designs of the exhibit are a reminder of rich cultural roots. Of the traditional cultural and spiritual beliefs manifested through the objects of Out Of This World, Nekrassova says "they are all treasures and should be valued very highly."
The first half of the exhibit focuses on textile and jewellery designs from traditional Central Asian cultures. The Tekke people of turn of the 20th century Turkmenistan, for example, would hang wool coverings, called ensi, over the entrance to their nomadic dwellings. The ensis were designed with patterns which symbolized the ancient Turkic culture's belief in the co-existence of three worlds - those of the gods, of man, and of spirits departed. The bottom portion of the door coverings were often rendered in brown or earth tones to symbolize an under world and these dark tones gradually became lighter as a world of deities was portrayed at the top of the ensis. Man, of course, occupied a middle world. In addition to a very real connection between the indoors and the outdoors, the door coverings of the Tekke depicted the interconnection of their three world belief.
When a visitor points out that the ensi design, with its use of patterns such as diamonds, rectangles, and zig zags, is strikingly similar to motifs associated with Aztec or native American Indian culture, Nekrassova says there is no direct link - any resemblance simply indicates the universality of the human experience. "People everywhere think the same way. We live on the same earth, see the same sky," says Nekrassova, who spent 24 years as curator with the State Museum of Oriental Art in Moscow before moving to Toronto in 1999. (Although perhaps not immediately obvious to a North American viewpoint, there are many parallels between Oriental and Islamic cultures.) Nekrassova's curatorial partner on Out Of This World is Max Allen, who co-founded the Textile Museum of Canada in 1975.
Handsome 19th century Turkmenistan jewellery designs include a silver headband decorated with carnelian gemstones and glass inserts. Carnelians were a common design element worn by those of the Muslim faith because the stone was the legendary favourite of the prophet Mohammad. Central Asian cultures embraced silver jewellery because they saw the metal as both a promoter of good health and fertility and as a protector against bad fortune. Silk production, centred in the Fergana valley of Uzbekistan, was popular for clothing and household uses because the natural rustling sound of the material was also regarded as protection against evil spirits. Out Of This World displays a 19th century silk and velvet chalat, or woman's coat, from Bukhara, Uzbekistan that features a pattern of jangling silver ornaments which compensates for this particular coat's lack of a natural rustling sound effect. Clothing one's self in bright colours was also considered a natural means of protection against misfortune. The indigenous wild madder plant provided brilliant reds, for example.
The exhibit highlights 17 Islamic prayer rugs from Persia, Turkey, and the Caucasus regions of Russia and Azerbaijan. Apart from their function of providing a ritually pure space for Muslim prayer, the rugs display traditional Islamic symbols such as the arch, which suggests communion with the Divine, and a garden of Paradise, which depicts a blissful eternal life. A prayer rug dating back to the Caucasian city of Shervan in 1860 is the oldest piece on show in Out Of This World. The exhibit notes how Turkish weavers were careful to design a rug's pile, or raised fibres, towards the top end of the piece so that those in prayer could slide their hands easily towards the traditional mihrab arch depicted on the material's surface. A shading tree is another common symbol on Islamic prayer rugs and the idea of a tree which protects mankind appears elsewhere in Out Of This World.
Although much of the traditional clothing and textile designs which appear in the exhibit continue to be produced today in their native cultures, for Nekrassova at least, nothing matches the quality of the original designs on display in Out Of This World, which were produced with the creator's belief that her very life and that of her family depended on the quality of her work. (While women produced designs for family and home use, men could be involved in commercial textile production.) Out Of This World features textile and jewellery designs as a means of empowerment and protection from traditional cultures beyond central Asia, including countries such as Indonesia, China and Tibet. Traditional textile designs of the war-torn Afghanistan are also represented here. In these days of international conflict, Out Of This World is a reminder that people throughout the world share hopes, dreams, and desires, and that in many significant ways we are one.

Out Of This World: Textiles from the Spirit Realm is on show until June 2, 2002. The Textile Museum of Canada (416 599 5321) is located at 55 Centre Avenue.

Publication Date: 2001-12-09
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