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Women’s Quilts of Pride Collaborative community quilting project, made by workshops’ participants from IRWRO in the UK; ‘Atelier patchwork’ ACAD and ‘Atelier Victor Hugo’ Narbonne, ‘Les Quatre Amies’ Bizanet and Beaux-Arts de Sète in France.
Mixed media; 2023-24; H 158cm x L 182cm & H 290cm x L 208cm
A year-long participatory textile project engaging more than 50 participants in the UK and in France, resulting in two large patchwork quilts telling stories of aspiration, resilience and celebration, and exploring the themes of home and womanhood across borders.
Dr. Farhana Hoque – Extract from THE OPEN DOOR catalogue : [..] The Women’s Quilt of Pride workshops bring together both artists and participants from two nations to explore the collective deep well of creative imaginations. [..] Gathering in spaces that are free from stress to quilt is particularly important in a world that is living through one crisis after another. Circa fifty people came together from different backgrounds and generations to meet in various places close to the L.A.C. and in London. Whilst L.A.C. groups experimented with expression and unleashing personal creativity, the London participants reflected on suffering and hope. From these brave spaces, individuals stitched their stories, emotions, and aspirations for themselves (and the world) into “squares”, continuing a tradition but also fashioning a beautiful new whole. In co-creation there is belonging through numbers and the quilts convey their solidarity and grit. The Women’s Quilt of Pride patchworks and the art works at THE OPEN DOOR exhibition demonstrate the importance of brave spaces for conversation, reflection and self-actualization. And in co-creation, it reveals our inherent capacity and potential to connect with each other and to be a much-needed umbilical cord for humanity. [..]
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SENTINEL XXI Aude Hérail Jäger
(for the L 8m x l 5m x H 5m installation at the L.A.C. of hanging SENTINELS VIII, X, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX)
Graphite or mixed media on Japanese Awagami 2020-23 ; from SENTINELS ongoing series; each scroll ca. 230cm x 97cm
BTN – Extract from THE OPEN DOOR catalogue [..]Past and Present. Aude creates her SENTINELS, which do not have specific models in art history, by borrowing multiple details drawn from artworks around the world. These tutelary figures appear sacred because they prove that cultural mixing is possible and prefigure the beings of tomorrow. [..] The body is essential in the work of Aude, whose SENTINELS resemble dancers, as if passing through their floating paper surface. The body comes into play in her frottages, whether in corridors, on a complex staircase or a studio table, an intimate space, a place of one’s own, like Virginia’s room. The body is precisely what bridges two voids or two eternities.
Farhana Hoque – Extract from THE OPEN DOOR catalogue [..] The orb of SENTINELS depicting feminine archetypes, is another example of continual adaptation and invention. Aude’s representations are derived from sculptures, illustrations, and ancient books, discovered in museums and galleries. Her sketches were constantly re-worked and then emptied of their original content and meaning to be filled instead with materials and texture from Aude’s own life journey as an artist. One of the SENTINELS is updated with embellishments from around the globe. She is adorned with shells, headdress, and dagger to tell a new story of protection, potency, and agency. Rooted in core strength, she maintains a pose of stillness from which she could attack as a warrior or shower you with loving kindness. Layering an existing representation with new meaning, Aude also creates a connecting thread that links artists across time. [..]
Aude Hérail Jäger, Sept 2024: “Last August, a leak in the roof of my studio badly damaged the large drawing SENTINEL XXI. The first paper conservator wrote it off. I could not afford the second paper conservator as neither landlord, nor insurance, nor various art charities could help. Then, Mira Gogova, the Fabulous paper conservator, came to my studio and patiently gave it her best over the past year. Mira’s expertise has helped soften the worse of the damage, yet the natural mulberry fibres will not be returning to their original state neither in texture nor colour. Part of this work will remain distorted and stained.
I am now seeing this episode in a different light. Why discard three years’ work in an impossible quest for perfection? Why conceal this catastrophe I had no control over? Furthermore, and in the context of THE OPEN DOOR, SENTINEL XXI reflects life, experience and physicality. The exhibition is about survival, resilience and finding what is needed when disruptions occur.
SENTINEL XXI may not be pristine as I had wanted, yet the figure is still dancing and carrying lotus flowers, a symbol of rebirth, the sun and creation. Its/her/their long ribbon adorns it/her/them but can be deadly, should it get deployed.
SENTINEL XXI is getting out of the studio in full and glorious imperfection.”
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La Science de la Maison Collaboration Aude Hérail Jäger et Tisna Westerhof
Mixed media on 48 pages from the textbookl La Science de la Maison, wooden panels 2023-24
Each page ca. H 21.7cm x l 15.9cm; overall dimensions: H 134cm x l 176cm
Marie-Stéphane Salgas – Extract from THE OPEN DOOR catalogue [..] For this joint exhibition, Aude and Tisna ordered a book republished in 1959 “La Science de la Maison : Cours d’Enseignement Ménager Théorique et Pratique”, a book that aimed to initiate women into housework during the 1950s and 60s. It offers a snapshot of a world in which the role of women could go no further than the smooth running of the home. Together, the artists have hijacked its pages in a playful and imaginative way, producing a collaborative artwork for this exhibition at the LAC. Tisna’s drawings and collages are essentially a response to the images rather than the text (the book is in French, a language Tisna does not speak), while Aude’s are inspired by and rely as closely as possible on the texts. [..]
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Black Wall Street series Tisna Westerhof
(for the installation at L.A.C. of ‘New York – No Indictment In NYPD Chokehold Death’, ‘Justice For Freddie’, ‘You Ain’t No Muslim Bruv!’’, ‘Black Lives Matter!’, ‘I Can’t Breath’ and 3 Antique Small Doilies (Greenwood Residents 3)
‘Point of View” Diptych H 130cm x W 120cm Vintage lace curtains, white silk, wadding, embroidery thread, watercolour; 2017
‘Liberté Egalité Fraternité’ H 90cm x W90cm Green silk wadding and free-stitching
Marie-Stéphane Salgas – Extract from THE OPEN DOOR catalogue [..] The installation Black Wall Street is an embroidery on various textile supports. The title is a tribute to one of the most violent lynchings in the United States in 1921, when white Americans attacked the inhabitants and businesses of the African-American community in Tulsa, one of the worst outbreaks of deadly violence in the country’s history. She has embroidered images of victims from old photographs on small vintage doilies. These doilies are displayed on embroidery frames, bearing poetic witness to Tisna’s art. We find these images again on old lace curtains further on in the exhibition. Violence penetrates the whole house. Breaking news (special news flash)!
Always true stories. Like the work of an ethnologist, Tisna compiles and reports on this violence. She embroiders contemporary racist abuse perpetrated by the police in North America, as well as in London. We must not forget the artisanal expertise of our ancestors, nor the horrors of society.[..]
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Hauser & Wirth Stairs Frottage (196 Piccadilly, London) Aude Hérail Jäger
(for three installations at L.A.C.: ‘Hauser & Wirth Stairs Frottage – 196 Piccadilly, London’ (L 7m x l 6m x H 4m); ‘Home Corridor Frottage – Hammersmith, London’ (H 4m x L 1.80m) & ‘Studio Table Frottage – Hackney, London’ (H 1.30m x L 2.40m)
Graphite on Japanese Awagami tissue papers, wood, cardboard; 2010; 1 scroll (out of 4); W 97cm H 10m
BTN – Extract from THE OPEN DOOR catalogue [..] Entering the LAC, now appropriated by the artists, yields much more than the shapes, materials, colours, etc. that we notice at first sight. This is clear in Aude’s graphite frottages of staircases on interminable rolls of paper, arranged in waves washing over the space, between sea and mountains (a sea so fascinating to Piet Moget) as if to create a mise en abyme in the exhibition space itself. They clearly reflect her desire to defy gravity, to move from the ground into space, from earth to sky, to rise up towards the spiritual life.[..]
Marie-Stéphane Salgas – Extract from THE OPEN DOOR catalogue [..] Aude has produced frottages throughout her career. Frottages made using a large stick of graphite on fine Japanese paper. Taking a closer look at her frottages allows us to invent stories. Stories that are both true and untrue, like parchments with images that echo the passing of time. “In places the marks on the paper look like those of the Chauvet cave”, Aude says. One day she “fell in love” with the wooden Victorian staircase in Hauser & Wirth’s first London gallery. In the style of Max Ernst, she made a rubbing of its steps. Silent marks. A relationship with time, memory and the traces we leave behind – through creation. This led to four long rolls, over ten metres in length. Given their fragility and despite the height of the LAC’s ceiling, a solution had to be found to hang them. The idea of a rollercoaster came up. Like life, in short. [..] There is also a frottage of the corridor of a house in which Aude lived in London. A corridor, another place we pass through; we enter at one end and exit at the other, sometimes meeting people on the way; it is open. Then the pencil becomes finer, as does the paper, to make a rubbing of the table in her London studio. This is the first time these three artworks have been exhibited. Works produced in several stages as the light changes throughout the day. [..]
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Digest Tisna Westerhof
Paint on paper; 2015- ongoing series
Marie-Stéphane Salgas – Extract from THE OPEN DOOR catalogue [..] The mural display of plates painted like Delft crockery, Tisna’s nod to the Netherlands, is not floral. They no longer decorate the walls of dining rooms in bourgeois homes as they once did. They are not made from porcelain. They are paper plates. Plates of the kind used for a gallery opening or a picnic; cheap, disposable materials. The same imagery, in infinite ways and served up every day by the media in our homes, our kitchens. What do we have on our plates? What are we swallowing? How do we digest it? Dirtied by food, empty, the paper plate ends up in the bin. Quickly consumed, quickly thrown away, like a piece of news forgotten as soon as it has been read, heard or seen. One piece of news chases away the next; one act of violence chases away the next; one war chases away the next.[..]
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Delft Blue ‘On The Flipside’ Tisna Westerhof
(for installation at L.A.C. 3.40 m x l 2.40 m x H 0.25m))
Tile installation: each 15cm x 15cm 2024; screen-print on ceramic tiles; 2015- ongoing series
Marie-Stéphane Salgas – Extract from THE OPEN DOOR catalogue [..] More children on the wall of hand-painted earthenware tiles. The children are no longer playing in the meadow or by the river; the countryside has given way to an urban childhood. The water is the River Thames, deep, polluted, dangerous. The children are no longer hanging off the branches of a tree, but a rope strung between St Paul’s Cathedral and the Thames, unaware of the dangers that threaten them. [..]
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Mother’s Matchsticks – Seven Years Aude Hérail Jäger
(for installation at L.A.C. L 3.50 m x l 2.30m x H 0.25cm)
Matchsticks (collected 1996-2015), cotton rags, vintage bed linen with embroidery ‘AT’; 1996-2023; 240 bundles, ca.13200 matchsticks
Marie-Stéphane Salgas – Extract from THE OPEN DOOR catalogue [..] An embroidered white hemp bed sheetspread out on the floor, covered with small bundles of matchsticks tied up by scraps of white fabric torn by hand . “These matchsticks mark the meals prepared by my mother during the last twenty years of her life”. Her grandfather’s initials are on the sheet.
Every family has a bed sheet like this one. No one uses them anymore because they are too heavy. The most beautiful sheet was used for the wedding night, to present a new-born, or for a wake. Once it became slightly worn, it was used as an everyday sheet, before being cut in half for the children’s beds and in half again for the cradles. And then it would leave the bedroom for the kitchen, become a tea towel before ending up as a rag.
Aude has then cut up these rags to tie little bundles of matchsticks around her pain of knowing that her elderly mother remained alone in the South of France, so far from London.[..]
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‘Once In A Blue Moon’ Tisna Westerhof
(for installation at L.A.C. of 13 paintings of various sizes, all under 30cm)
Paint on wooden panels, gold leaf; ca. 21cm x 28cm; 2020-21
Marie-Stéphane Salgas – Extract from THE OPEN DOOR catalogue [..] A return to childhood and to innocence. The series of small blue paintings in the manner of Delft earthenware offers an idyllic vision of childhood. An outlet for Tisna’s homesickness when she was unable to visit her family in the Netherlands during the Covid pandemic. She digs out photos from her family albums. Creativity against sadness. Half-naked children playing and laughing freely in nature. The golden frame with its old-fashioned touch tells us that these bucolic images belong to the past [..].
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Costume Drama Tisna Westerhof
(for installation at L.A.C. of 4 elements L 12 m x H 5 m)
Embroidery, patchwork, free-stitching, embroidery thread, newspaper cut-outs, vintage fabrics; 2018-2024; 160cm x 110cm
Dr. Farhana Hoque – Extract from THE OPEN DOOR catalogue [..] She Knows from the Costume Drama series by Tisna, transports us from the present to the past, but this time the journey is within ourselves. Embroidered on the portrait are patchworks containing newspaper clippings from our troubled times. Like bloodletting, the News images purge the suffering to begin a process of renewal and healing. Looking into the eyes of the girl and witnessing the folded arms, we are reminded that resilience has always been there, since childhood. And that it’s like an elastic band, taut when stretched but able to relax back into its essential form. [..]
Marie-Stéphane Salgas – Extract from THE OPEN DOOR catalogue [..] Further away, at the LAC, her portraits of children seem to have come straight out of 1950s advertising; their hair nicely cut, smiling or sulking, often blond. A light, carefree childhood with a joyful future. A little like the image of the American dream. Fake news! On their clothes, Tisna has embroidered text and images of a violence that is definitely real. Newspaper photographs of refugees, police brutality, racism. The clothes are made from the fabric of dresses that belonged to Tisna when she was little.[..]
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SH Pillow Case SH 1912-1996 – She Who Was Impossible Aude Hérail Jäger
Graphite on vintage cotton pillowcase 65cm x 69.5cm; 2019; framed 73.5cm x 76.6cm x 4.3cm
Aude Hérail Jäger, 2019: “This real-life woman (1912-1996) contracted polio when she was a six-months old baby; she underwent multiple operations on her lame leg and wore an awkward metal and leather leg brace all her life. Her mother died when she was still an infant while her father doted on her.
Despite this difficult legacy she led an independent life. She secretly had multiple lovers – an exceptional daring for a woman of her generation living in a tight provincial catholic environment (think George Eliot’s Middlemarch half a century earlier). She campaigned for and led a disability charity.
And yet her older siblings called her ‘impossible’, an offensive label airily perpetuated by their descendants. It is likely that her unwillingness to conform to requirements was the cause of their disapproval. An unmarried and disabled woman was not expected to be flamboyant, defy conventions and lead an insouciant free life.
One trait was her long curly hair, abundant and wild – from childhood to old age. This pillowcase with the initials SH was hers. The work is homage to a courageous and dignified woman who made it possible to be herself in spite of opposition.”
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Je dois dormir, nuit du lundi 8 décembre au mardi 9 décembre 1913 Aude Hérail Jäger
(for installation ‘Je Dois Dormir ‘ at L.A.C. (H 5.50 m x W 2.30 m); vintage bed linen with embroidery, washing line, pegs; 2019)
Pencil on paper: 6cm x 6cm; wooden gold frame: 15cm 15cm; 1913
Marie-Stéphane Salgas – Extract from THE OPEN DOOR catalogue [..] Another artwork exposes an unusual story in which the private world again meets the universal. On a bed sheet, the drawing of a woman carrying her head aloofly, is encircled by a text that repeats the same litany “je dois dormir” [I must sleep]; only the date changes. There is a glimmer of sadness or worry in her gaze. The story of a tragedy about a woman killed in December 1914, whose photograph and ninety-six hand-written notes were recovered by Aude. In the months that preceded her death, every evening she would write “je dois dormir”. War was looming. Her husband, an officer, had to leave and go to the front. The anxiety of the wife and mother of three young children became uncontrollable. What troubled Aude was that society condemned the woman for her own murder. By drawing her on a sheet belonging to the dead woman’s sister, Aude aims to wash away the shame, to give her back a dignity through compassion. This is partly why the artwork is displayed high up. [..]
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THE OPEN DOOR Alphabet Cubes (Aude Hérail Jäger) with Alphabet Hankies (Tisna Westerhof)
(from ‘Alphabet Hankies’ installation in L.A.C. (H 2.50 m x W 8 m) and from ‘Alphabet Cubes – CLIMATE’ (H 1.60 m x 0.4 m x 0.4 m), Alphabet Cubes – HOPE (H 1.60 m x 0.4 m x 0.4 m), and Alphabet Cubes – DREAM (H 2 m x 0.4 m x 0.4 m),
Embroidery, appliqué, watercolour on handkerchief; each 40cm x 40cm; 2019
Wood, acrylic paint; each 40cm x 40cm x 40cm
Marie-Stéphane Salgas – Extract from THE OPEN DOOR catalogue [..] Tisna’s alphabet resembles a board of hearts or a stall, an ice cream cone shopfront. Colourful, plain, striped and multicoloured scoops. The design, embroidered in black thread on white fabric, illustrates a word that begins with each letter of the alphabet. Learning the alphabet of violence in our societies: B for Brexit, F for Fake News, I for Immigrant, W for War… Tisna’s works reveal themselves bit by bit.[..]
Marie-Stéphane Salgas – Extract from THE OPEN DOOR catalogue [..] Aude’s brightly coloured giant cubes are reminiscent of children’s cube toys, part building game, part puzzle, combining letters and images to teach reading. Here, she offers us a new polysemous reading with her cubes: L I F E, H O P E, H E R E, L E A P. She seizes upon the past, childhood and the home to lead us towards other things, hope and life.[..]
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Model of L.A.C. (Lieu d’Art Contemporain) Aude Hérail Jäger, curator
Mixed media; L 1.40 m x W 1 m x H 0.25 m); 2023-2024
The model was built to scale for curating purposes, specifically to create an installation over the 750m2 of the L.A.C. incorporating the character of the disused wine cellar, remodelled in the 1990s as an art space. For example, the vertical cement vats grey lines served as a frame for the SENTINELS installation.
Another strong curating brief was to have a humming conversation between the two artists accompanying walking throughout the space. This was achieved by all perspectives allowing viewing one artist’s work including a perspective of the other’s artist work, from below, above, diagonally or through it.
