BRODEUR

For their latest project set in the domestic space of an apartment, Middlemarch invited Stephan Goldrajch (1985, lives and works in Brussels), an artist whose practice is confined to the intimacy of the home through his predilection for embroidery.

"Thread," he says, "is, I think, the word that qualifies me the most distinctly, literally and figuratively. My process incorporates different techniques (crocheting, weaving, embroidering, sewing…) and is based on the very essence of the word 'link.' Embroidery constitutes one of my preferred fields of investigation. I appreciate the rigor the technique imposes and how it symbolises another era: where time and duration were imperative, determining factors. I'm what you could call an artist-artisan-weaver. I like to think of artisanship as characteristic of a commitment to excellence."

Stephan Goldrajch's work is based on questioning hierarchies: between noble and popular arts, as well as between "insider" and "outsider" audiences. For his Middlemarch project, Goldrajch will realize a monumental work of embroidery. Taking advantage of the occasion, exhibition visitors will be called on to realize, together, a collective, giant work of embroidery.

Beyond the links that will form among those gathered to embroider, Stephan Goldrajch also instils a shamanic element in the project. Gestural repetition suggests a simple, hypnotic movement, capable of engendering singular moments in various states favorable to reflection and exchange.

Stephan Goldrajch is steeped in the oral tradition, and enjoys playing with various codes: bringing crocheting, embroidery and sewing, generally associated with women and older people, into contemporary art.

For him, this tradition is associated with ritual and magic. It is within the intimacy of the home that women work together on these "minor" tasks while telling stories. In the European countryside of the past, and still today in some faraway nations, where the Kantha in Bengal and the Suzani in Central Asia continue to be weaved.

The embroidery-artwork becomes a charged object, as defined in shamanism: respectful of the 3 bodies (mental, astral and physical) associated with 3 levels: the believer who prepares the talisman, he who receives the talisman and also believes in it, and the object itself, endowed with power.

Stephan Goldrajch uses his art practice as a pretext for creating encounters and discussions - a vital concern for the artist today.