The After Conversation/ Isle of Glass
Solo show at la Cave/ Institut Francais, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 2026
curated by Gabriela Moldovan
Isle of Glass is born from a collection of seaglass gathered from beaches over the past few years, transforming the found material into a pretext for speculative archaeology. The series constructs the narrative of a lost island civilization that produced anthropomorphic and zoomorphic glass statues, structures that sank along with the island, fragments of which continue to wash ashore. The pieces of glass thus become artifacts, material evidence of a fictional history treated with the rigor of a real one.
The series articulates two complementary registers. One is imaginative and reconstructive, embodied in large-scale textile works made through patchwork quilting, in which the silhouettes of the statuettes float on water surfaces seen from above. The technique is not neutral: quilting carries a long tradition of commemoration and personal memory, and the materials, second-hand or deadstock, add another layer of time and history before being sewn together. The second register is analytical and documentary, embodied in smaller works in which seaglass is placed on embroidered grids and textile color charts, mimicking the protocols of archaeological cataloguing.
There is a productive tension between the two registers: between the found fragment and the imagined whole, between the gesture of cataloging and that of reconstructing, between what has been lost and what can be recovered through fiction.
The series articulates two complementary registers. One is imaginative and reconstructive, embodied in large-scale textile works made through patchwork quilting, in which the silhouettes of the statuettes float on water surfaces seen from above. The technique is not neutral: quilting carries a long tradition of commemoration and personal memory, and the materials, second-hand or deadstock, add another layer of time and history before being sewn together. The second register is analytical and documentary, embodied in smaller works in which seaglass is placed on embroidered grids and textile color charts, mimicking the protocols of archaeological cataloguing.
There is a productive tension between the two registers: between the found fragment and the imagined whole, between the gesture of cataloging and that of reconstructing, between what has been lost and what can be recovered through fiction.
