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WORKSHOP | Anarchival Embroidery with Nyata Collective
Wednesday April 8
14.00-16.00 , ongoing
De Plint: Van Schaeck Mathonsingel 29, 6512 AJ Nijmegen

What stories are hidden in our clothes? How can these narratives be preserved? And how can clothing challenge institutional archives?

From the moment we were born, humans have lived intimately with textiles. The clothing that touches our skin carries traces of the places we have dwelt in and can remind us of a specific person, feeling or life event. Clothing therefore not only covers our bodies, but carries meaning, too: they are an intimate, personal archive of parts of our lives.

Nyata Collective invites you to gather the memories hidden in your clothing and embroider them on batik tapestries together with other participants. You will experiment with different mending and stitching techniques (e.g. Sashiko Stitching) and collectively reflect on the meaning of archiving. By embroidering messages and symbols on batik tapestries made with previous workshop participants, The tapestries become carriers of a mosaic of memories, with each newly shared memory adding another layer of meaning to this living archive.

Nyata Collective (ID/NL)

We are Asha Victoria and Amber Zara van den Pangaard, Arnhem and Rotterdam-based multi-disciplinary artists. We explore ways to address social topics through collaborative and hands-on processes. Forming together as Nyata Collective, we dive into different modes of harvesting knowledge and redefining the archives in hopes of dismantling the boundaries of physical and invisible matters. We do so through collective gatherings of transmitting generational knowledge and skills. Through both human and non-human encounters, we gather personal stories and turn them into interwoven threads of knowledge and skills, in the hopes that we can move towards a dynamic and circular system centred on community building and reciprocity.