Interdisciplinary Practice
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May 2019
Kaihui Zhang
In this unit, I did a studio visit with Professor Zhou Xueqing who has been working in embroidery for more than 30 years. Then, I collaborated with a fashion designer Bowen to design three sets of outwears. I used this as an opportunity to bring my artworks into a design field to create a new visual effect. Also, from the conversations and research, I have got a chance to have an external impact on my practice.
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The idea of this unit started from a Chinese embroidery exhibition that was organised at Piccadilly Circus in London. From Professor Zhou’s works, I saw the value of time by each thread, it contained a similar effect to my current practice. The method to reappear an image is to express the two properties of time, which can be seen in the artworks, they are the momentary feeling formed from the image and the slow pace from the hand-craft or hand-drawn technique.
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Before the collaboration, I think it is necessary to have basic knowledge of the material in textile and to be able to distinguish the techniques in embroidery. So, I went to visit her studio in China. The visit and conversation were very inspiring, she explained and demonstrated the history and the basic stitching techniques of embroidery. I am especially interested in the double-faced technique, which means an image can be viewed from either side of a piece or even different images on each side. The professor showed some of her recent abstract pieces to me and these made me started to consider the relationship between textile and art. I decided to create a blog (https://kaihuiart.blogspot.com/) to record the works that I am interested in, particularly in the area about textiles in contemporary art. In this blog, I also recorded the process, from the embroidery exhibition to the later studio visit.
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On the other hand, during the conversation, I knew the use of embroidery is no longer restrained in textiles. This expression has been developed by collaboration with clothes, shoes, handbags and watches. The embroidery technique is mostly used in the design industry, many international brands brings the embroidery element into their design. For example, a Japanese designer Nukeme brings the "Glitch Emboidery" in his collection. In the process, he disrupted the embroidery data, so the sewing machine prints error.​
This brought me to the collaboration with a designer (Bowen) as a way to inject some new thoughts in my practice and see how my works can be changed or impacted by it. In the beginning, through communication, we decided to design three outwears. Bowen was responsible for the design sketching and it was based on a series of pattern that I drew in my sketchbook, we discussed and picked six patterns. Then, we talked about the style and agreed to use a sense of futuristic cutting with an exaggerated silhouette (shape) in our design. For the texture, we would like to use a kind of embroidery technique called Glitch textiles. ​
At this point, I was doing research for my critical practice. The research was about how the glitch appears in visual art. Through a conversation with the designer, I knew Glitch textiles and some visual form of this idea in textile design. The scarf will be presented like Phillip Stearns’s textiles but on a softer material. The designer’s pattern is derived from a new digital error in a system. For example, the "MYDOOM" series, the scarves "replicated" the entire binary of the 2004 computer virus.
The texture and appearance of textile are very similar to a low quality or glitch image on a digital screen. We can see the scarf that we designed, by multiplied my drawings, the patterns were presented as a glitch image and it will be produced in a physical form. It is a way to point out the crossover from the virtual into the real, it shows a tendency that we are embracing the poor and error appearance in our daily lives. I realised that we are so good at creating a reality in the virtual, but often forgot the moments when the virtual expressed its own fundamental property, which is also part of our reality.
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In this unit, I explored the boundaries between textile and art from embroidery and design. However, I am still wandering around or maybe there are no boundaries in art. From this experience, I found some similarities between textile and painting. There are a lot of artists such as Hanna Knox, Victoria Manganiello and including professor Zhou. They named their textile works as painting and that seems to open some new possibilities on painting. In the aspect of the material to work on, or the way to make marks on a surface. For example, in Hanna’s paintings, she uses a variety of materials to let the works perform, change colour, heat up or sensually absorb light from the room.
In the future, maybe after this course, I would like to collaborate with people in other fields such as engineers. As a conclusion, I found my favourite artwork that combined art, craft, and technology. ‘Computer 1.0’ is an installation by a Product Design Engineer Junlian Goldman whose work explores the convergences of technological innovation and society and a contemporary artist Victoria Manganiello. Video is available at: https://www.stylus.com/blffct