The fifteenth-century spanish rug
Conversation between Teresa Lanceta, Nuria Enguita and Laura Vallés Vílchez.
NE-LV The Spanish word for rug, alfombra, comes from the Arabic al-khumra, meaning ‘mat’. Rugs were highly valued goods, and the Muslim presence in the Iberian Peninsula facilitated their development significantly. After the expulsion of the Moors, Muslim craftsmen continued to work on Christian soil for royalty, aristocracy and the Church. The wealthy were admirers and patrons of an art and culture that they also harassed and persecuted. Once again, objects and art are valued but people are repudiated. In your writings you comment on the closed structure of these rugs (in contrast with the open, borderless rugs of the Middle Atlas).
TL Textiles not only serve a function, they are a language. We see how this is so in the patterns of nomadic weavings which generally present diamond or triangular shapes and nets that can extend outwards on any side without altering the overall expression, and indeed the fragment already conveys the whole. The rhombuses suggest a space in movement, whereas the quadrangular net, border and centre illustrate the concept of space held by settled, hierarchical and structured peoples, like those that made the fifteenth-century Spanish rugs. These costly items requiring specialist craftsmanship denote an urban culture and powerful beneficiaries.
The now Christian territories of Albacete and Cuenca enjoyed a flourishing industry of splendid Islamic-inspired and -executed rugs which powerful Christian warlords bought from the Mudejars as they pursued the reconquista of land and the expulsion of the Moors. These rugs had bold borders and featured Christian coats of arms, which demonstrates the subjugation of the weavers and their culture. And yet, although Muslim, these weavers and their forebears had been born in the territory later called Spain.
These Spanish rugs are patterned with octagons, reflecting their medieval milieu, and the Mudejar style reveals their singularity within Islamic art. In contrast to the ‘expanded field’ of Persian or rural rugs, Spanish carpets have a small central area delimited by several heavy borders, although these are sometimes interrupted by the coats of arms of the Christian overlords who purchased them. The compositions and patterns reflect the spirit of the time.
NE-LV Like much of your work, the patterns and tapestries in La alfombra española del siglo XV draw on life and incite a political, social and historical reflection while simultaneously recovering a memory. Constant themes in your work are heterochrony, permanence and the memory of others, whether this be in the life you shared with the gitanos in Barcelona, the women weavers of the Middle Atlas, the threatened Muslim artisans of the fifteenth century or, nowadays, the migrants. It’s as if you have felt an underlying urge to bring to light through your work all that we have not been able to deal with either humanely or politically in history – a history that never tires of trying to eject ‘the other’ from our lives. We lack true politics, a sense of the ethical obligation, skill and responsibility to unite worlds. This reflection is very present in your work and is poignantly expressed in your text, El sueño de Bob Marley (Bob Marley’s Dream): ‘Yesterday I had a dream. Bob Marley was walking down the aisle of the Campoamor Theatre in Oviedo: he had received the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts. He was not alone. His fellow band members and some Jamaican children accompanied him’ (p. 183). It’s as if all of a sudden it were evident that the prize is the people who are not there, all those other neighbourhoods... And that is the definition of collectiveness.
Again, La alfombra española serves as both a sort of register and a statement, human and symbolic: life is in the centre and is accentuated by the metaphorical shift towards religious scenes that are almost unnoticeable among the ornamental motifs: Mary Magdalene, the Flight into Egypt and so on.
TL In the paintings of Hans Holbein, Jan van Eyck and Giovanni Bellini we can see so-called ‘Oriental’ rugs, whereas in those of the Spanish painters of the period – Pedro Berruguete, Diego de la Cruz, Jorge Inglés and a long etcetera – we see Spanish rugs. In the latter, the ornamental language is clearly dominated by Christian symbols, but nevertheless, it is universal. Today we can equate Flight into Egypt with the plight of so many migrants and refugees fleeing with their children, and Massacre of the Innocents with the tragedies that occur all over the world.
These scenes are in my work but only minimally, and in some cases, they barely feature at all, whereas ornamentation occupies the entire space, in a nod to the fact that fifteenth-century Spanish rugs were testimony to a culture that was defeated, but which, while it lasted, shone bright.
The pre-eminence of ornamentation in this work is also an attempt to encourage its use as a language, especially as a collective artistic language, which is typically used as a way of protecting, reinforcing or extending the life of a material through embroidery, particularly when there is an emotional attachment to this material, such as a piece of fabric or leather.
NE-LV Painted on black paper, the patterns in this series allow us to talk about the importance of ornamentation within a wider revision of classical art history spanning the last five decades, which has seen a reconsideration of ornamentation as a non-descriptive, non-naturalistic and non-abstract art form, albeit fundamental in the artistic practice of times past. Woven fabrics also serve to critically dissect the Renaissance perspective and release the ornamental, which is used in your work as an element of structure.
TL I immerse myself in these rugs via their ornamentation as a way of expressing the relationship among the elements and creating a network that sets the knots communicating in a system of repetition.
It is not about isolating the patterns or modules, but of connecting them in a whole that can be extended beyond its limits. The themes are drawn using coloured pencils on black paper to draw out the darkness from the background. The canvases are painted in encaustic with a touch of oil, borrowing techniques that faithfully convey how things were done at a time when artisanal processes were as present as thought. I have wanted to retain within me and extend through my drawings the feeling and the knowledge that they still deliver after so many centuries.