Weavings from My Grandmother—Paintings by Mirela Trăistaru
Muzeul Textilelor displays for the second time the work by PhD. Mirela Trăistaru, a well known artist at national and international level. The work displayed here are inspired by the material and immaterial heritage she has from her predecessors. They are the result of the research and creation project A century, a story, an inheritance, which investigates the defining duality of the contemporary people: on one hand, the global man, the hi-tech man, dependent on a life lived in speed, and the traditional man who feels the need for spiritual recharge from the mystical atmosphere of the place of origin, the man who seeks his identity in the dowry box of his grandparents.
The personal history of the artist Mirela Trăistaru lies at the basis of the whole concept of the project: her parents and grandparents lived their lives influenced by the two world wars. The great-grandfather from Transylvania (Valea Someşului Mare, Năsăud) fought in the First World War. He was taken prisoner and worked in coal mines in Siberia, returning to Romania to his wife and ten children after four years. Both Grandparents fought in the Second World War: the paternal grandfather from Stroeşti, near Horezu, died on the front – the last memory of the artist’s father focuses on the image where he is a child, and hand in hand with his younger brother, watched his father, dressed as military, leaving the village for a war where the return isn’t promised. The maternal grandfather from Nepos (Someșul Mare Valley) stayed in the Odessa camp and returned to Romania after 1945. Meanwhile, her grandmothers and great grandmothers were sewing and weaving on the loom – women and children were also direct victims of the war, not indirect victims since women’s war were personal and familiar.
“Celebram The Met”
Highlights from the Gift of The Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Muzeul Textilelor
It is rare for a museum collection to be significantly enriched quantitatively and qualitatively all at once. This has happened in the case of the Muzeul Textilelor, an institution formed in 2017 in Băița, Hunedoara County, Romania. A year after its founding, the Museum received exceptional support from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the form of a donation from the Met’s Costume Institute, of 1,871 regional costumes and accessories indigenous to over eighty cultures worldwide. Included in this donation are a number of Romanian costumes of the best quality, which The Met generously gives back to the Romanian heritage.
Meant to coincide with The Met’s 150th anniversary, celebrated in 2020, the exhibition Celebrating The Met: Highlights from the Gift of The Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Muzeul Textilelor honors that great institution. The high quality and wide-range of the objects included in the exhibition bear witness to The Met’s longstanding tradition of collecting with foremost attention to the object’s cultural identity and artistic value.
These creations blend necessity with a desire for beauty, practicality with an expression of spirituality. The costumes are unique to their cultures, developed according to the resources immediately available to each cultural group. Some of the objects show the intertwining of materials, techniques, and costume typologies within groups of populations from neighboring territories, while others show major differences between cultures located at opposite geo-climatic areas. All these cultural aspects are addressed in the exhibition, which includes objects from various countries presented in a cultural dialog with each other.
The exhibition is structured in four sections: embroidered costumes; woven costumes; costumes felted, quilted, printed, beaded, and made of plants; and accessories.
Most of these pieces are on display for the first time.
