The Nomadic Nature collection consists of contemporary carpets and textile surfaces designed by SUSANNA CATI and made partly in unique pieces and partly replicable in limited editions; the first result of a collaboration and joint research with expert weavers and researchers from the world of weaving, the second creative synthesis between the long career as a designer and the passion for travel of Cati which finds its form in decorative plants for exclusive custom-made products. In addition to this double body of work, there is also the series of textile artworks “Between yarn and word”, works of textile art and fiber art.
The preview of NOMADIC NATURE was presented in Switzerland on 23 June 2018 on the occasion of the opening of the Contemporary section of 36Mazal Suisse | Luxury and rare carpets. The second stage of the presentation was held on 27 October 2018 at SCD Textile & Art Studio in Perugia.
***NOMADIC NATURE | The collection, curated by Barbara Pavan and Monnalisa Salvati, will be on display at the showroom Arredinterni Michele Iervolino, via Martiri di Nassiriya 194, San Giuseppe Vesuviano (Naples), exclusively Saturday, November the 24, 2018 between 4-8 pm.
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NOMADIC NATURE | Genesis of a collection
“My house is small, but its windows open onto an infinite world.”
(Confucio)
An open identity is emerging, which we could call ‘mestizo’, an identity of traveling and migration that requires a willingness to meet and compare. The effect of times of rapid change in which we are constantly searching for new equilibriums is that nomadic nature that is more plural and more open to the instances of the present.
This is the inspiration behind Susanna Cati’s new collection of textile surfaces: a collection of textile works, carpets, and tapestries where past, present, and future, local and global, art and design meet and intertwine in a new narrative that, through the threads, combines content and function.
A collection that emigrates to ‘foreign lands’ to find a new identity.
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EXCLUSIVE AND LIMITED | The contemporary design collection
Nomads in the future.
Contemporary design rugs, mats, and tapestries make up this collection designed by Susanna Cati, which maintains the fil rouge of her being nomadic in the round: nomadic among the techniques of realization but also nomadic among the different sources of inspiration that find an expressive synthesis in her creations. Works in which shapes and colors encountered during the journey blend together, words and stories frequented in the readings, the inevitable emotions derived from a boundless passion for art and design.
After a long experience in the field, at a national and international level, this collection of textile surfaces replicable to measure in limited editions is an attempt to become, through the artifacts, nomadic to the future, starting from the contemporary spaces that they will inhabit.
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LOCAL – THE RADIANS OF GLOBAL | Among archetypes, traditions, and experimentation
Time nomads.
Carpets and mats designed by Susanna Cati and made in collaboration with weavers and researchers in the textile industry. The works in this collection are made using ancient local techniques. The use of these practices has also been made possible by the constant commitment of extraordinary figures in the research and conservation of traditional skills whose roots lie in the history of the communities to which they belong.
This is the case, for example, of the mat “Azzaccaratore”, a four-handed work by Cati and Assunta Perilli, an icon of resilience, archaeologist, weaver and extraordinary researcher, active in Campostosto among the rubble of the 2016 earthquake, depository and scholar of centuries-old Abruzzo textile traditions; or of “Ananda”, a rug created in collaboration with the Sardinian Textile Cooperative SU MARMURI whose history is intertwined with the art of the great Maria Lai.
The collection was born from the desire to preserve and enhance the local dimension as an extraordinary treasure of diversity capable of enriching increasingly global and uniform societies. A complimentary choice and not an alternative one, in the perspective of a conscious growth of one’s history and identity and therefore able to imagine new and wider horizons.
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BETWEEN THREAD AND WORD | The textile art collection
Nomads between pages
Ancient bags used by the nomads of the East, small prayer or curtain carpets that Susanna has re-interpreted by intervening with textile inserts or by removing from the body of the artifacts. She has followed the thread of a journey through literary texts of writers from different countries.
The result is a series of works that lose their ancient function while acquiring a new unexpected identity; works that become the narrating voice of common stories, written pages, signs and memories of encounter and clash, of tearing and mending. Each is a metaphor for the complex and multiform phenomena generated by migratory flows that no era has been able to escape and that find new balances and solutions in the ever-changing demands of the contemporary world.
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SUSANNA CATI
An artist and designer with a constantly enriching career, her experience marks a continuous passage of cultural, professional and design growth. Starting from classical studies, she obtained her degree at the Academy of Costume and Fashion in Rome. Immediately after, she gained experience in the field of fashion, while further developing her interest and knowledge of oil painting and portrait techniques. In particular, Susanna’s collaboration with stage designer Giovanni Licheri during the preparation of theatrical sets for Teatro Argentina in Rome, as well as her experience as a fashion designer’s assistant for freelance designers and important Italian and French houses contributed to enriching her skills and reinforcing her textile creativity.
A talent that finds in the following years the expressive figure most congenial to her in the carpet-making (as in tapestry) to her design with tufting technique or with more traditional techniques, in collaboration with experienced and established operators and researchers of the field. From these experiences was born the design and manufacture of carpets or textile surfaces, as well as the design of furnishing accessories. Unique or multiple pieces of limited edition, designed and made with natural or experimental materials, with an infinite variety of colors that reaffirm the bonds and types, like a clot of forms contained in the potential state, but born from the same creative matrix.
She has taken part in a large number of exhibition projects, exhibitions, and events, with significant acknowledgments from specialist magazines. Her works are present in private and public collections in Italy and abroad.
