Every fabric has two sides: the right side and the wrong side. The right side of the fabric is what we show to the outside world: the carefully designed, flawless surface, the opportunity to express our personality, the image we put on day after day. The wrong side, on the other hand, reveals what remains hidden. The reverse side reveals a tangled web of chaotic threads and unfinished stitches, a world of accumulation and often invisible, exploitative labor—everything that creates and holds together the seemingly perfect surface.
The second group exhibition of the IMÁGÓ Eco-Cultural Lab explores this reverse side. Through the work of three contemporary artiss — Rebeka Csombordi, Aliz Farkas, and Zsófi Kozma — the exhibition explores the medium of textiles and how clothing — the “second skin” that surrounds us from birth to death — shapes our relationship to ourselves, our bodies, our community, and our environment. The exhibition approaches the medium of textiles on three scales — micro, meso, and macro. From individual experience to society as a whole, it illustrates how our relationship with what we create, wear, accumulate, and ultimately leave behind has changed. What has become of that once-close, almost organic connection that made textiles not merely utilitarian objects, but part of our memories, our relationships, and our lives?
Since time immemorial, clothing has been one of the most sophisticated — and at the same time, most radical — means of self-expression. The three artists examine, from different perspectives, how textiles become at once a personal memory, a physical experience, and a social issue. What do we carry forward, and what traces do we leave behind? It is up to us whether we continue to bear a toxic burden — hastily cobbled together and sacrificed on the altar of superficial self-expression — or whether we are willing to weave our world anew with genuine meaning and care.