The Museo de América presents the new audiovisual project by visual artist Eva Lootz, a leading figure in Spanish experimental art since the 1970s.
"Hilos que bailan" offers an approach to thread and weaving from multiple perspectives, exploring their artistic, historical, cultural and symbolic dimensions.
Through a video in which movement takes centre stage, the audiovisual work invites viewers to discover the many connections hidden behind an apparently simple element such as a thread, with which fabrics are constructed.
One of the project's fundamental axes is the reclaiming of textile work and craftsmanship, traditionally undervalued in Western culture compared with those considered fine arts. Spinning, weaving, sewing or embroidering nevertheless constitute practices that have played an essential role in numerous societies and that embody knowledge, techniques and ways of understanding the world.
Eva Lootz's artistic work also opens onto other historical dimensions of thread. Its relationship with the first systems of writing and mathematical representation, its importance in the development of navigation and, later, its role in the Industrial Revolution show how the textile universe is closely linked to some of humanity's great technological advances. This evolution reaches into the computer age: looms and, especially, the Jacquard loom constitute one of the precursors of programming and of the algorithmic systems that made the development of the first computers possible.
Another aspect addressed is the traditional association between thread, fabric and the feminine world. From the myths of Ariadne and Penelope to the so-called "labores" that for generations formed part of the education and daily life of many women, textile work has been deeply tied to the cultural construction of the feminine.
To bring these ideas into the present, "Hilos que bailan" incorporates movement and bodily expression through collaboration with dancer and choreographer Kike García Gil, who combines his artistic activity with an intense dedication to embroidery. His participation allows a dialogue between thread, body and movement and turns the concepts raised by the project into a visual and dynamic experience.
In this way, "Hilos que bailan" proposes looking at thread not only as the raw material of fabrics, but as an element capable of connecting art and craft, language and knowledge, tradition and technology, past and present, and of revealing the complex relationships between people and the world around them.
© Ministerio de Cultura - Gobierno de España