Local Colour,hosted by Shirin Melikova of the Azerbaijan National Carpet Museum, Baku, Azerbaijan

Online event, hosted on Zoom by Shirin Melikova of the Azerbaijan National Carpet Museum

Dr Shirin Melikova is the Director of the Azerbaijan National Carpet Museum, Baku. The protection and popularization of the historical heritage of Azerbaijan are at the forefront of all her activities. She has given rise to many innovative museum projects, designed and curated the first inclusive programs in the country, organized online projects, and built new strategies for maintaining the museum's development in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Shirin Melikova is an art expert, curator of many major art exhibitions and festivals. She regularly gives lectures in leading textile museums around the world, universities, international symposiums, and conferences. Dr Melikova is the author of more than 20 books and many scientific publications. 

Showing great success in promoting Azerbaijani culture in the international arena through the ICOM platform, Dr. Shirin Melikova was re-elected as the President of ICOM Azerbaijan National Committee for the second time in 2019.

In 2018, Shirin Melikova was awarded the title Honored Worker of Culture of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

Outline of programme: 
The Azerbaijan National Carpet Museum, established in 1967, represents the world’s most complete collection of Azerbaijani carpets. It shows all the carpet-weaving regions and most of the compositions typical for each of the four types of carpet weaving: Guba-Shirvan, Ganja-Gazakh, Karabakh, and Tabriz. The building takes the shape of an unfolding carpet. The exposition is arranged in such a way that carpets gradually unfold in front of the viewer. 

Dr Shirin Melikova will guide participants through the world of carpet art. This programme will include a virtual tour of the museum guided by Firahnaz Musayeva, Head of International Relations and Innovations Department. We will explore the leading exhibits on display at the permanent exhibition of the world’s first Carpet Museum. Dr Shirin Melikova will introduce the participants to the museum's innovative projects, inclusive programs, and major events that encouraged the development of dyeing craft and the revival of ancient carpet techniques. The program will conclude with an interview with People's Artist Eldar Mikailzade in his studio. The artist will demonstrate the process of weaving new wool and silk carpets.

Maija Esko
MAIJA ESKO works with reverence but strives to question everything. As a textile artist and designer she tries to reach and touch with her work. She is curious to know how meaning is created, how her message is interpreted, and about the experience of interaction and responsibility for those viewing and using her work. 

Her painted art textiles are stories. Horizontal stripes are landscapes of her neighbourhood and the layers of the colours are traces in the social and emotional
environment. The process of painting is conversation. The story in her pieces can be found in between the hand painted stripes: design in daily use and art in everyday life. 

Outline of talk:  
Art Textiles for Daily Use

Maija's talk will describe her approach to making and working in dialog with
nature, people, and other animals. Her talk will tell the story of her relationship with her natural surroundings, and how her pursuit of a life in harmony with the natural world is represented in her wearable, usable artwork.

Shaivyya Gupta
Shaivyya has trained as a fashion designer at NIFT Kolkata and Pearl Academy, Jaipur. She fell in love with hand block printing when she moved to Jaipur from Calcutta in 2011. The fascination with the craft led to an internship with Brigitte Singh, who encouraged her to create her own language and own ‘story’ with the craft. During an apprenticeship with Nandan Ghiya, a contemporary artist who works with New Aesthetic tenets and vintage Indian photographs, Shaivyya was introduced to glitch art and Optical art of the 60’s as well as to the local visual vernacular. Her experience with Brigitte, Nandan, and her many trips to the Walled City of Jaipur ultimately led her to start her own printing studio. She has been creating her textiles in conjunction with master artisan Mahavir Chhipa since 2015. The technique of hand block printing is unique to Shaivyya's practice. She uses a limited set of pigment dyes and upcycled wooden blocks to create her designs, and gives traditional Indian design values a facelift by intersecting them with illusionistic values. Her designs aim to embody ‘The New Kitsch.' They are mutable and traversing simultaneously between the past and the present.

Outline of talk:  
Technicolour Desert State: The impact of local landscape on my colour palette inspiration

“When you step into Rajasthan it seems like somebody just dials up the ‘saturation’ level of your field of vision.”

Colours are considered utopian in the arid desert state of Rajasthan and imbue every bit of everyday life here- from the arts and craft heritage of the region to the local costumes, social customs, and traditions.

The old bazaars of Rajasthan have been a pivotal source of inspiration for Shaivyya's creative practice. There is a plethora of optical stimulation everywhere you look- from the ornately painted walls of havelis (mansions) to the printed ghaghra skirts of the local womenfolk and the tie dyed turbans of the men. 

The people embrace colour in every aspect of their Life as a celebration of Life itself. Textile prints were and are still used to imbue colour to Rajasthan’s visual vernacular. Life exists in full Technicolor here and is the focal point of my textile designs, which relies on the interplay of vibrant primary colours to create geometry, illusions, and textures inspired by Rajasthan. 

Shaivyya has compiled some of her favourite images of bazaars, monuments, and costumes to provide a glimpse into the Technicolor Desert State of India and illustrate how it propels her practice.

Dominic Samsoni of Barefoot
The BAREFOOT design and textile house was founded by Barbara Sansoni in 1964. An artist, writer, designer, and illustrator, Barbara taught herself how to work with coloured yarns that crossed each other. BAREFOOT is a story about the craft of weaving and design, but is equally about people, and how people work together. 

Today, the team of designers follow that philosophy to create textiles, clothes, bags, and beyond. Colour, in simple rectilinear proportions is characteristic of BAREFOOT’s style. The production of beautiful and useful textiles is inspired by the landscape, seascapes, culture, flora, and fauna of Sri Lanka.

Outline of talk:
Local Colour: How fabrics reflect the culture in Sri Lanka

Dominic of BAREFOOT will share how the culture and colours of the Island of Sri Lanka have been the inspiration for the design in textiles that BAREFOOT produces, woven on a simple two pedal loom. He will demonstrate how colour inspiration from the land is first turned into a precise working drawing and then into a piece of hand woven cloth.

Patrice Perillie of Mexican Dreamweavers
Patrice Perillie has been an immigrants’ rights attorney for over 30 years, providing access to justice to those who can least afford it.  She was the co-founder of the Central American Refugee Centre- CARECEN, a nationwide network of non-profit legal service organisations, and is an expert on US asylum and immigration law and policy. 

She established a non-profit corporation, Mexican Dreamweavers, which helps keep indigenous weavers and artisans in Mexico. Born and raised in Connecticut, she has offices in Manhattan and Mexico. She is fluent in Spanish and has lived on the coast of Oaxaca for over 30 years. In 2009 she became a Mexican citizen.

Outline of talk:
Patrice supports and represents 60 Mixtec women who are backstrap loom weavers from Pinotepa de Don Luis Oaxaca who produce cotton "huipiles", "posohuancos" and "rebozos", as well as home textiles (table spreads and runners, bedspreads and runners, throw pillows, placemats, napkins). Many of the textiles they make feature their native brown "coyuchi" cotton thread which is hand spun on a drop spindle, dyed with natural plant and animal dyes. They grow the native brown and green coyuchi cotton and white cotton. Their primary colour palette are the blues and blacks of indigo, the red cochinilla from a beetle that lives on the nopal cactus and also work with other plant dyes such as the gold "pericon", the yellow "sempesuchil" and the barks of various trees. The most extraordinary, however, is the very rare "tixinda" purple dye which is sustainably milked from the endangered "tixinda" sea snail (caracol purpura pansa) the exclusive cultural patrimony of the men of this Mixtec town.

Through a talk and video, Patrice will share these unique materials and traditions of the Mixtec people.