GrandmothersGirls who lived in the villages of Epirus made in the middle of the 20th century ravishing artifacts. Now in 2009 I met them as grandmothers in the same villages. They kept their handmade rugs (kilimia) in chests (baoula). I asked them to choose one “kilimi” and narrate whatever they wanted about it and about their lifes.
Handicrafts represent a wide and prominent category of material cultures. The weaving textures, the patterns, the stuff and the fiber colors of a rug, may testify the place from which it comes from, comprising this way features and other informations of cultural identities. As in every artifact that follows a long life tradition, the traditional handicraft is a work closely related with the place where it were made and the people who made it.
The weaving art is a universal expression of human civilization. Every culture adjust this craft in their natural and social reality. Geophysical elements as climate and time or social elements as morals, religion and economy, have their traces in artifacts of material culture like rugs.
In the county region of Ioannina there are many villages with tradition in woolen weft-knitted, made by women. Knitting and broidery were a womanly domestic work for every age, used also as pastime. Women that lived in traditional societies weaved to decorate their houses, made clothes and worked the loom.
In modern societies these needs of cloth wear and house decoration are supplied by the industry. However the girls in the villages who used to weave and knit, kept on living. They became grandmothers…
As in ancient times people used to imagine and name constellations in the sky map, I imagined on the earth map one constellation, in which every star represents the village of every grandmother I met. I named this constellation “Grandmothers” (Yayathes).
The idea of the “Grandmothers Constellation” started as sensitization act for the elderly people, for the city-counties which gradually get desolated and for a traditional craft which fades in time. The grandmothers I met talked with passion and humour about their lifes and showed with proud their artworks. They moved me really deep and I wish the Constellation of Grandmothers will grow continuously and bring to light unique stories and artworks.
Mariana Ziku, 10th of July 2009,
Ioannina
