Helena Almeida: 'Seduzir' [To Seduce, 2002] (detail)

Collection

Tejido, 1999 [Fabric, 1999]

Image caption
TERESA LANCETA

Tejido, 1999 [Fabric, 1999]

  • 1999
  • Wool and cotton fabric
  • 250 x 150 cm
  • Cat. T_28
  • Acquired in 2020
By:
Alejandro Simón

Fabric, 1999 by Teresa Lanceta is a tapestry produced as part of the artist’s long process of observation of the textile-making traditions of the weavers of the Middle Atlas region of Morocco. More specifically, it belongs to the second phase of the process, which she called 'Moroccan Fabrics', presented in 2000 at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, where she was invited to work with Moroccan textiles from the collections of the Ethnology Museum of Barcelona, the Musée d'Art d’Afrique et d’Océanie, the Musée de l’Homme in Paris and three private collections.

The piece is large enough to cover a human body. There are no straight lines and the range of colours in the yarns used is so broad that it is hard to count them. It is based on traditional motifs but her composition has no pattern and is instead an exercise in discontinuity. Paying attention to traditional methods as she weaves enables her to discover and reflect on the experience and form of production. In her reflections, Lanceta hints that shapes are the result of these experiences, and that they cannot be dissociated from their use and setting. The piece must be read, because it interprets the sustained tensions in the tough task of putting together a warp and recognising the curves generated by the structure in the design. What looks to the outside eye like an error is seen by Lanceta as the expression of a multitude of artistic decisions taken by weavers on a daily basis: the design is created as they work, on the basis of decisions influenced by the behaviour of the materials used. We understand that the structure, the warp, is altered by a weft that sometimes incorporates it and sometimes omits it, so that the resulting tapestry can be understood over and above its status as a decorative element.

The fabric and the experience of weaving it become known in conversation and over time. And over time the language that accompanies it emerges. As a result of the dialogue involved in writing this description, Lanceta decided that the work originally identified as Untitled should be called Fabric, 1999.

Alejandro Simón

 
By:
Alejandro Simón
Teresa Lanceta
Barcelona 1951

Teresa Lanceta is self-taught. She works with fabrics, painting, drawing, video, photography and writing. She developed an interest in art through her friends, and her interest in fabric after a chance encounter with a skein of pure cotton, which she bought on a whim and wove into a small tapestry. It was to be the first of many weavings and works about weaving.

Lanceta obtained a degree in Modern History from the University of Barcelona in 1974 and a PhD in History of Art from the Complutense University in Madrid in 1999. She has worked in Barcelona, Seville, Alicante, the island of La Palma and Madrid. She has travelled frequently to Morocco and spent long periods there since the 1980s. Since then the work of the weavers of the Middle Atlas has taken up a substantial proportion of her time and her output, as evidenced by three exhibitions: 'La alfombra roja' ['The Red Carpet'] at the Textile and Clothing Museum in Barcelona (1989); 'Tejidos marroquíes' ['Moroccan Fabrics'] at the Reina Sofía in Madrid (2000) and, most recently, 'Adiós al rombo' ['Farewell to the Rhombus'] at the Casa Encendida in Madrid (2016).

In 2011 she presented Cierre es la respuesta ['Closing is the Answer'], a video documentary featuring workers at the old cigarette factory in Alicante. She returns to the same theme in her book Mujeres e industria tabaquera en Alicante ['Women and the Cigarette Industry in Alicante'], published in 2013, which won her the Bernat Capó Award for ethnographic studies. In 2015 she returned to video art with the project 'El paso del Ebro' ['Crossing the Ebro'] (Espacio Mínimo gallery, Madrid). Along with the video, this project features photos, weavings and a text linking her weekly journeys between Alicante and Barcelona with remembrances sparked by the landscapes through which the train passed: the Battle of the Ebro in 1938 and the memories of her family from the Terra Alta region.

In 2019 she staged an exhibition entitled 'La alfombra española del siglo XV' ['15th Century Spanish Carpets'] (Espacio Mínimo gallery, Madrid), on a theme that she had been exploring since 2004: as she wove and observed, she gradually came to understand how Moroccan fabrics told the story of their historical and social context as they were made.

She has taken part in numerous group exhibitions: 'How to (…) things that don’t exist', at the 31st São Paulo Biennial (2014), 'La réplica infiel' ['The Untrue Copy'] at the Dos de Mayo Art Centre in Móstoles (2016), the 57th Venice Biennale (2017), 'Colección Per amor a l’art. ¿Ornamento = Delito?' ['Art for Art's Sake Collection. Ornament = Crime?'] at the Bombas Gens venue in Valencia (2017-2018), 'Aplicación Murillo. Materialismo, Charitas, Populismo' in Seville (2019), 'Colección XVIII Textil' ['Textile Collection XVIII'] at the Dos de Mayo Art Centre in Móstoles (2020-2021) and 'Actually, the Dead Are Not Dead: Una forma de ser' ['A Form of Being'] at the Württembergischen Kunstverein in Stuttgart (2020-2021). She taught at the Massana School in Barcelona from 2013 to 2020 and writes for the magazine Concreta.

Alejandro Simón

 
«Tejidos marroquíes. Teresa Lanceta», Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. MNCARS (Madrid, 2000). «Tejidos marroquíes. Teresa Lanceta», Villa des Arts. Fundación ONA (Casablanca, 2000-2001). «Adiós al rombo», Azkuna Zentroa (Bilbao, 2016-2017). «Teresa Lanceta. Tejer como código abierto», Museu D`Art Contemporani de Barcelona MACBA (Barcelona, 2022). «Teresa Lanceta. Tejer como código abierto», Institut Valencià d’Art Modern. IVAM (València, 2022-2023).
Vv.Aa. Tejidos marroquíes. Teresa Lanceta, Madrid, MNCARS, 2000. Vv.Aa. Adiós al rombo, Madrid, Bilbao & Santiago de Compostela, La Casa Encendida, Azkuna Zentroa y Revista Dardo, 2021. Vv.Aa. Teresa Lanceta. Tejer como código abierto, Valencia and Barcelona, MACBA e IVAM, 2022, p. 124.