EnquireIntroduction
In homage to my grandmother’s hands, weathered by both soil and thread, I weave stories of resilience and connection. Kassia I and Kassia II, my tufted pieces, bear witness to the labour of generations of women.
My grandmother toiled in her sun-drenched garden, unrooting trees, wrestling berry bushes, and digging deep holes to remove the lifeless remnants of once-mighty trunks. Her hands, calloused and knowing, moved seamlessly between soil and fabric. At nights she settled by the flickering TV. There, on the edge of newspapers and scraps of paper, she doodled a secret language of roots, plant parts, sometimes faces. These quiet sketches, born from her joy and longing, left a strong memory of her restless mind. At the heart of Kassia I and Kassia II lie patterns of gooseberry bush roots and pear tree roots, traced from memory. And along the edges, a nod to the checkered notebooks that held her markings.
Kassia I and Kassia II were part of Laura Põld’s solo exhibition Translating and Co-labouring that took place in January 2023 at AV17 Gallery in Vilnius.
Keiu Krikmann: “In the two-part series Kassia, Põld makes visible the process of making and unmaking. Combining and unravelling threads, she also endows the viewer with a two-fold vision. Despite the unfinished parts and loose threads, the viewer is compelled to construct an image, a whole, to finish it in their mind’s eye. At the same time, looking at the unravelling pieces, the image disintegrates into material, drawing the viewer’s attention to the source, the components.”
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