Section 2

“All materials are self-determining, each with their own singular capacities. My desire is always to discover a material’s simplest functions, and to work with the possibilities it offers up in and of itself.” Taking this principle as her point of departure, Niki Kanagini pursued the art of tapestry-making from the beginning of the 1960s. Founding her practice on the teachings of the Bauhaus, she made use of traditional weaving techniques, seeking to transcend distinctions between the applied decorative arts and abstract painting. She used a vertical haute-lisse loom for the creation of these works, weaving woollen, cotton, silk, and linen threads, as well as lengths of string, directly into the warp by her own hand or with the help of assistants. Through a hands-on process of elaboration and re-signification, so-called humble, everyday materials are granted artistic autonomy and become a medium for conceptual and aesthetic investigations. As the artist herself notes in a 1972 text titled “Art, the Bauhaus, and Our Century,” written for Kouros magazine: “The Bauhaus approach made no distinction between painters and artisans. Painters were also expected to teach an applied art; in keeping with the school’s ethos, artists were essentially seen as a kind of advanced artisan. […] It was Amédée Ozenfant who said: ‘Art is the demonstration that the ordinary is extraordinary.’”