After completing a degree in textile design at La Cambre, Iris Frere then turned to textile arts and tapestry at the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts, where she completed her master’s degree.Her practice emancipates itself from an apprenticeship tied to...
Read MoreAfter completing a degree in textile design at La Cambre, Iris Frere then turned to textile arts and tapestry at the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts, where she completed her master’s degree.
Her practice emancipates itself from an apprenticeship tied to tapestry and is anchored in the use of every textile medium. Weaving, lace, knitting, patterns. Everything that will question the thread and the interlacing and that will take the thread to relate a story.
The main narrative arc of her practice evolves around the idea of the shelter and allows her to share a certain intimacy. Moreover, the time and technique required to make her textile sculptures brings the creative process to the forefront of her projects. A long and laborious gesture, for example the making of a lace, allows Iris Frère to put all her body and mind into her pieces. Through this ritual, she gives them the status of intimate objects and, subsequently, to become installations where the spectator can enter and share her intimacy.
The idea of discovering and sharing intimacy leads Iris to propose to the spectator pieces that reveal the temporality of the workshop. That of the making. They testify to the work of the artist and develop the admiring relationship that the spectator may have with the piece he is observing.
By hijacking the pure technique, Iris Frere opens up the field of possibilities in the development of her artistic practice. Far from being confined to the production of craft objects, she develops large-scale sculptural projects that also question the artist’s freedom in regards to the traditional techniques.
Text by Céleste Alicot
