Fibres & Layers

Felting is based on applying pressure on wool fibres to entangle them and to create a unified textile surface. Although having hot water and soap catalyses the process, essentially wool requires no additional materials or tools to be felted. Therefore, felting is almost solely based on material features and it preserves its strong connections to wool. This creates a visual aesthetic that resembles the rawness and continuity of growth and transformation of wool. This significant connection makes it almost impossible to think about the issues of felting without referring to wool. This strong presence of material-ness of felting has urged to design a space where the connection between raw material and practice is articulated by showing various forms and stages of this transformative relationship. As a part of practice-led research, experiments with felting emphasised curly amorphous shapes of wool and highlighted the feelings emerge from softness, warmth, scent, and grease. This exhibition elaborates on these features, feelings and sensory experiences by exploring wool and felt in various ways. The fibres & layers exhibition displays ways of being with wool and articulates some of its sensory features through transforming wool into felt and presents the rawness and unfinished-ness of felting. The viewers are encouraged to find their ways of being with the material by touching, smelling and playing with it.