Post Mass

The Department of Textile Design, Shenkar

The textile industry, advanced as it may be, has essentially remained as it had been in the late 19th century in the West. However, the economic and cultural value it produces – has changed. In the past, textile products were highly valued trading goods. Opposingly, the contemporary industry, that has migrated eastward over the years, improved productivity and distribution, reduced production costs, obscured cultural boundaries of textile products, causing their transformation into cheap, liquid and rootless consumer products.

In this day in age, the role of textile designers is expanding. Their value is no longer measured only by their ability to design advanced and beautiful textile products of good quality, but also in their ability to preserve and restore those long lost cultural values: locality, authenticity, the craft of the hand, and the human spirit.

Two most recent final projects from the department of textile design present a new perspective on production and value. Neither one of the projects in this exhibition disregard the progress and technological capabilities the textile industry has accumulated by merely returning to traditional hand crafted techniques. On the contrary, they highlight the manner in which today’s textile designer learns the industry and the its various manufacturing processes, specializes and excels in one’s ability to control, interfere with, and disrupt such processes, and how he brilliantly breaks through their linear boundaries.

Curator: Dana Ben Shalom
Exhibited Projects:
FOG – Nofit Shemesh and Shira Sinai
Undivided Attention – Avigail Baer