SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- The Museum of Craft and Design (MCD) announces RugLife, an original exhibition on view from December 14, 2024 to April 20, 2025. Guest curated by Ginger Gregg Duggan and Judith Hoos Fox of c2-curatorsquared, RugLife features the work of 14 contemporary artists from around the world who use the rug as a medium to address cultural issues such as religion, technology, social justice, housing, and the environment. RugLife examines this functional-object-turned-artpiece in its contemporary form, as it is manipulated, reinterpreted, and made new.
c2-curatorsquared has selected a diverse roster of artists and designers from the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, working across a variety of media including yarn, cardboard, repurposed carpets, and hair combs. The artwork featured in this exhibition is divided into four thematic sections: Interweaving Past and Present, Patterning a Communal Experience, Delineating a Sense of Place, and Looming Politics.
Interweaving Past and Present
Because the rug is an object of daily use throughout cultures, and across societal stratifications, it is familiar and widely approachable by all. This provides the context to merge past with present, serious history with pop culture, and stereotypically Eastern and Western ideologies. Ukrainian artist Oksana Levchenya produces traditional kylym rugs, a technique for carpet-weaving dating back to the 16th century. The tradition stops at the process, however, with her unique designs combining folk ornament and ethnic patterns with characters and elements from pop culture. Levchenya’s hybrid symbolism deploys historic Cossacks fighting against Pac-Man. These elements of humor belie the serious concern the artist has for historic and current cultural icons.
Patterning a Communal Experience
The range and richness of voices embedded in the simple carpet illustrate that these objects are not inert, but are often complex expressions of ideas and points of view. Instead of mixing symbols from various cultural sources, the artists in this section highlight elements of unique communities showing that despite trade and cultural exchange, referencing personal experience can be incredibly powerful. Black vernacular hair designs serve as inspiration for a number of works by artist Sonya Clark. Her unconventional rug, titled Comb Carpet, is made of hundreds of standard black plastic combs, teeth facing up. This strong statement of cultural identity—Clark identifies as African-American, Caribbean, and Scottish—is loaded with layers of meaning about racial stereotypes, the power of reappropriating cultural symbols and understanding hair as a literal carrier of DNA as well as a metaphorical connection to one’s roots.
Delineating a Sense of Place
From area rugs used to divide or decorate a room, to prayer rugs marking a personal sacred place for devotion, rugs serve to delineate space. That notion of space also extends into the global realm, early on through trade, up to today via displacement and emigration. In Grandpa’s Monobloc, Ali Cha’aban creates a profound statement on Arabic identity by covering every surface of a standard white plastic chair with carpet. These inexpensive stackable Western-style Monobloc lawn chairs are frequently seen in Arabic communities, particularly where there has been resettlement or in refugee circumstances, where temporary homes are made from very little. In an attempt to reclaim some of the sensibility of home, Cha’aban reinserts elements of the culture that serve to dignify the design of displacement.
Looming Politics
The work of artists included in RugLife is reflective of current cultural issues and many of the works are politicized, given our highly charged and divisive political climate. The works in this section touch on issues that define our culture expressed through the ubiquitous and accessible format of the rug. Commissioned for the Tomorrow’s Tigers project, an initiative that seeks to raise funds and awareness supporting vital conservation work to increase wild tiger numbers through the World Wildlife Fund, Ai Weiwei created Tyger. In Tibetan culture, the tiger personifies wisdom and strength and invokes fearlessness and fortitude. Tibetan Tiger rugs originated with the actual pelt of a tiger, splayed, legs outstretched, its face upturned from its prone pose. Weiwei’s Tyger turns the traditional Tibetan tiger rug on its head, upside down, arranging the tiger on his back, claws curling inward in a more defensive posture. “Through the rug design, I hope to be able to do something for tigers; the meaning of their existence surpasses the scope of our comprehension, and yet 95% of tigers in the wild have gone extinct over the last 100 years, very sadly.”– Ai Weiwei
No matter the material, thread, or substance used, each of the rugs in RugLife weaves thoughtful discourse about many issues and concerns—on a global and personal scale. Whether we consider home or our place in the world, ponder the aesthetics or the ethics, there is no denying the rug continues to be a powerful vehicle for contemporary artistic expression.
Participating Artists: Nevin Aladağ, Azra Aksamija, Ali Cha’aban, Sonya Clark, Liselot Cobelens, Nicholas Galanin, Johannah Herr, Oksana Levchenya, Noelle Mason, Wendy Plomp, Stéphanie Saadé, Slavs & Tatars, Ai Weiwei, and Andrea Zittel.
