Carmen Schabracq (1988, Amsterdam) is a visual artist and works in various media including sculpture, textile, painting, performances and costumes. The mask is a recurring object and theme within her work, with which she explores the layered nature of human identity and her own identity as a -female- artist and mother. She collects fragments of stories and characters from various myths, (folk) art history and her own experiences and uses them to create a visual story.
During her residency at Lottozero Carmen wants to turn her research on her Jewish ancestors and family name SCHABRACQ - which means horse or saddle blanket - into a body of textile works connected to the horse.

Carmen was born in Amsterdam where she lives, works and graduated in visual arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy (2012), after a year of painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome. She obtained her Masters degree in theater costume design at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp (2015).

Carmen Schabracq, I am a mother now

We are very happy to announce that Lottozero has it’s very own, brand new, Domestika class online!

We’ve been working on the topic of archives since the very beginnings of Lottozero and now we are excited to share our ideas and researches with you in this online class:

CREATIVE TEXTILE DESIGN WITH HISTORICAL MATERIALS is a class you can take to explore creative methods to use archival materials as starting point for your new personal projects in textile and fashion design, but also art and much, much more.

Check it out here and enjoy some creative idea hunting on archives with us!

HAVE FUN!

As you know in spring of 2024 Lottozero became the first organization in Italy to make the ultra-modern TC2 loom available to the public, this has inspired us to create the cultural program ON WEAVING.

Now, thanks to the support of the region of Tuscany with Toscanaincontemporanea 2024, we are thrilled to announce an OPEN CALL for designers and artists, offering a member of our community the opportunity to work with the TC2 for free.

What does this residency provide?

• 24h access and a personal desk at the Lottozero's shared, co-working space and laboratory in Prato

• 24h access to a TC2 digital jacquard loom (3W, 110 cm weaving width warped at 12 ends per cm, 1320 ends in total, 100% cotton in natural color)

• access to other weaving, spinning and knitting equipment in the lab, access to traditional and novel weaving materials

• mentorship, logistical and technical support from the Lottozero staff to insure the successful realization of the project

• Participation in company and museum visits

The residency scheduling is flexible but should be in total 1 working week and should take place between October and November 2024  (please indicate your preference in the application) in Prato, Italy. The resident will receive 400 Euros as expense reimbursement and a materials budget of 200 Euros**. The artist will be responsible for locating housing and travel to and from Lottozero.

** materials budget does not go directly to artist, but is to be spent by the lab during the residency on supplies determined by the artist.

While we can provide instructions for getting started on the TC2 and if needed a prior consultancy on the digital file preparation, the artist is ultimately responsible for the design and the execution of the final piece.

A basic knowledge of hand weaving is required.

TO APPLY:

Please submit a portfolio with motivation letter outlining your goals for the residency and any past or current projects relating to textiles; your portfolio or website/instagram to opencall@lottozero.org

Applications are due September 1st, 2024

Applicants will be notified by September 18th, 2024

Welcome designer Isabel Wolfs, who will be at Lottozero for a one month residency!

Isabel Wolfs is a designer who specializes in sportswear, streetwear, and footwear. Her driving force is a fascination with materials and techniques. Trained as both a maker and designer, her creative process begins with researching a product's technical details, while remaining highly conscious of its impact. Coupled with her love for nature and sports, her approach to design prioritizes quality and sustainability.

These personal interests are reflected in Studio Wolfs, which explores experimental research design that challenges our perceptions of products. The studio focuses on product design through material research and craftsmanship, with a particular dedication to upcycling and sustainability. Studio Wolfs aims to highlight the importance of reconsidering how we make and value products, promoting a long-term perspective over a short-term one, by presenting materials and elements in a different light.

Fresh updates from Refashionized project!

Our team is is currently finalizing the Trainer’s Corner which encompasses resources and training materials for youth workers and trainers to support them in conducting training session with young people on two themes: History of Fashion and Sustainable Fashion.

Last month we met the other partners in Valencia for the second Transnational Meeting hosted by UPV Politecnica de Valencia. Here we had the chance to discuss the project’s progress, with a special focus on the Trainer’s Corner.

Read the full newsletter here and keep up to date on Refashionized social media: Facebook  , Instagram and TikTok .

We are looking forward to share the first results of the project with you! 

Miriam Del Seppia, Processes of unstable chemistry, 2023

Miriam Del Seppia is a visual and textile artist working across botanical dyeing, textiles, painting, drawing, ceramics and gardening. Her process-driven practice focuses on plants, fibers and colors as a way of exploring connections with specific living worlds and their embedded knowledge. Colors and textiles are not only carrying fundamental expressive qualities, but are also a medium of relation, rooted in the surrounding ecosystem. Through slow processes of self-teaching, learning from intimacy, affection and from other-than-humans, she circles around matters of care, ecology and de-growth.

Miriam is originally from Tuscany and currently based in Rotterdam, where she graduated in Visual Arts from the Piet Zwart Institute.

Soft activism. Textile art as a healing force is the 4th and last online exhibition of 2023/2024 Textile Culture Net program, curated by Hilde Skancke Pedersen.

When textile is used in artworks carrying stringent political themes and addressing harsh realities and suffering, the supple and often fragile materials often pose a potent opposition to the frequently tragic origins of the ideas behind the textiles.
The exhibition seeks to convey several artists’ reactions to attacks, colonization and recolonization of vulnerable countries, peoples and cultures all over the world, also focusing on themes such as racism, persecution, the exotification and exploitation of peoples and cultures, totalitarianism, war - and solidarity and healing.

Featured artists: Mari Meen Halsøy, Ala Savashevich, Hussein Shikha, Labay Eyong, Bindweefsel project, Jakkai Siributr, Krystle Lemonias, 100 Flag Collective.

Each year Textile Culture Net invites guest curators to join its curatorial team proposing an exhibition theme to which other curators react with an artwork proposition. This dialogue shapes a dynamic exchange of views, methods and perspectives on textile.

TCN’s online exhibitions are published on the institutions’ and guest curators’ Instagram accounts, connected by the hashtag #TextileCultureNet.

TCN’s fourth edition for 2023/2024 is co-funded by the European Union, within the framework of the prestigious Creative Europe program.
Grant Agreement n°101099994.

Mari Meen Halsøy, WOUNDS, 2010, present and ongoing, tapestry. Photo credit: Mari Meen Halsøy

We are excited to welcome Priss Niinikoski for a week residency, part of our On Weaving program.

Priss Niinikoski (FI/FR) is an artist/researcher working with textiles beyond soft surfaces. She explores the element of ‘risk’ when operating with tools and systems. Conceptually her works investigate material cultures and the ethical complexities of designing technologies, preservation and replication. Her artistic focus is on contemporary application of craft, material studies and their relation with technologies.
Niinikoski is actively combining textiles with sonic and digital materialities. Her interest is in positioning bodies in technologies to create personal interactions and companionships that formulate through material engagements. Building up on coding interactive environments and electronic textiles interfaces her studies currently focus on gesturality, translation between the digital and the analogue and how uncertainties, the risks that bodies pose in systems, embark new patterns for expression.

As an alumni of The Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp in 2022 her graduate collection was one of the 10 finalist at the 37th edition of International HyeĚres Festival for Fashion, Photography and Accessories. Her work has been exhibited internationally in Germany, Belgium, France, Japan and the Netherlands.

Artist Talk: June 14th, 6.30 pm

Lisa Batacchi, The Spirt will Return to Us, 2023-2024, tapestry, lacquered yarns with silk core, silks from various sources, ramie, raffia, 145 x 220 cm

SAVE THE DATE!

Join us next Thursday, June 13th, for the opening of “Sand Storms in Medio Mundi I-III”, a solo exhibition by Lisa Batacchi curated by Alessandra Tempesti, the start of our “On Weaving” program.

“Sand Storms in Medio Mundi I-III” is an investigation on the element of the earth and its connections within the sky, inspired by the work of philosopher and orientalist Henri Corbin. This intermediate axis between earth and sky is explored through a series of large tapestries hand woven by the artist, in collaboration with expert weavers and textile restorers. The title alludes to the sandstorms along the Silk Road, crossroads of cultures, religions and trade.

h 17.30: Artist Talk with Lisa Batacchi, in dialogue with Federica Forti, art historian, lecturer and independent curator, and Alessandra Tempesti, Lottozero Kunsthalle’s curator.

h 19: Exhibition Opening

June 13th, 10am-6pm: BASIC WEAVING WITH JACQUELINE STOJANOVIC

For the basic weaving workshop with Jacqueline Stojanovic, participants will be provided with a frame loom (an instrument that can easily be reconstructed on their own) on which they will learn the technique of tapestry weaving, which will lead them to create a completed work at the end of the activity.

In the second part of the day, artist and weaver Jacqueline Stojanovic will introduce the technique of hand weaving with Lottozero's large heald loom; all participants will be given the opportunity to try this technique, with which a collective fabric will take shape. All materials are provided by Lottozero. No prior knowledge of weaving is required.

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.it/e/919545985797

June 20th, 10am-6pm: JACQUARD LOOM WEAVING TC2 WITH NICOLETTA DI GAETANO

Participants will be guided by 'expert weaver Nicoletta di Gaetano to discover the innovative TC2 digital Jacquard loom from the company Digital Weaving Norway (more information at the end of the document).

After an introduction devoted to introducing the machinery and its capabilities, participants will engage in a series of design tests, moving from analog to digital. The three main weaves will be mentioned, then focusing on some derivatives. Each participant will have time to independently weave their own sample, choosing from a series of graphics prepared by Lottozero. All materials are provided by Lottozero. Basic knowledge of weaving is required

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.it/e/919551241517

June 27th, 10am-6pm: HILO CREATIVE SPINNING WITH SARA DIAZ

The HILO E-Spinner is an electronic spinning wheel and is the ideal starting point for learning to spin and create fancy yarns. During the workshop, Sara Diaz (founder of Hilo Textiles) will teach participants the techniques of carding and spinning, both with classic machines and the brand new HILO E-Spinner. The goal is to gain a basic understanding of carding and spinning techniques, from fiber to yarn. All materials are provided by Lottozero and are sponsored by DHG SHOP https://www.dhgshop.it/index.php No prior knowledge of spinning is required.

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.it/e/919556517297

 All workshops are 50€ maximum 10 participants

The On Weaving workshop program is kindly sponsored and funded by the City of Prato, in collaboration with:  Creative People in Florence, lofoio makerspace, Weavers Coordination

Jiajia Qi, Maybe Very Happy, 2022

Jiajia Qi is a Netherlands-based Chinese artist. Her work is just like dust in the room, which has no recognizable outline and is thought to be in the wrong place. It always stands in the middle of its unrelated things, with no recognized past and no predictable future; it is not something that is ‘beyond or next’ to viewers, but rather something ‘within or part’ of them. Her work blurs the boundaries between artificial and natural, interior and exterior, fictional and factual, in order to stimulate viewers to compare what their surroundings offer up for observation and what they actually observe. She creates experiential site-specific installations that incorporate interactive settings, spatial structures, and sculptural elements. 

During the residency at Lottozero she will approach several weaving techniques, testing different woven structures, in order to create a room-size textile installation, playing with the transparency of the threads and the darkness of the environment.

Lottozero will join Global Fashion Exchange on Friday, May 24th, 2024, from 17:00 to 23:00, with LOTTOZERO Fashion Exchange: a garment swap event in Prato, Italy, featuring DJ sets by Michelle Davis and Claudio Capitoni .
The event will also serve as the final celebration for Hannes Egger’s exhibition Second Skin.

How does a SWAP party work? To join the swap, guests are asked to contribute up to 10 items with a suggested retail value of 10 Euros or more. For each item contributed guests will receive tickets that can be used to exchange for items that are new to them. Items can be dropped off at Lottozero during opening hours from 9:30 – 18:00 starting the 8th of May 2024 or brought directly to the event. Find all infos and book your slot on Eventbrite.

credit: Anders Myklebust

Maureen Selina Laverty is a fashion designer and action researcher from Northern Ireland, based in Norway, specialised in inclusive sensory design. For the last three years she has been co-creating knowledge with people on the autism spectrum about their lived sensory experiences with clothing and how it shapes their experiences of the world. Through a PhD project she has prioritised the tactile, sonic and kinaesthetic senses to understand how we can design clothing for, and with, people who are neurodivergent and have amplified sensory needs. 

Her design residency at Lottozero is an extension of this work, inspired by research participants that report being overwhelmed by the sound, texture and movement of plastic rainwear. Through the development of a small collection of rainwear Maureen explores how the sound and weight of clothing affects how these sensations connect, or disconnect, us with our environment.

Her embodied way of working is informed by a bachelors in fashion design from NCAD, training as a tailor on Savile Row and Alexander McQueen, 5 years developing medical wearable technology, and a masters in product design engineering at NTNU with a particular focus on participatory and inclusive design.

A special edition of the Dub Freight project by Sarah CrowEST is now available on the Art section of the Lottozero online store.

The Dub Freight is an ongoing and participatory project begun in 2020 as a way to use materials at hand, make something out of nothing in constrained circumstances (Covid 19 lockdowns) and maintain contact and exchange of energy between artists and colleagues. Text and value amounts (numbers in a sequence of making) are printed on the surface of reused fabric, then shared with people for an exchange of feedback on the future life of the cloth.

During a residency at Lottozero in 2023 Sarah CrowEST made a special edition on heavy, antique linen, sourced from Prato charity shops. The artists exercised a light touch through multiple processes (sublimation, foil and screen printing, digital embroidery and labelling), allowing the qualities of the linen and signs of time to remain visible.
The series is available on the Lottozero online store and on LON Gallery, Melbourne, Australia.

British-born, Melbourne based artist Sarah crowEST works across discipline boundaries of contemporary art, social practice and textile craft. Her recent output occupies a conceptual space between painting, working apparel and the graphic qualities of text. CrowEST takes a critical interest in the provenance and value we place on objects, the processes and materials they are made of and their use and reuse.

We are excited to present the 3rd online exhibition of Textile Culture Net 2023/2024.

Curated by Zoe Yeh, the exhibition Torn and Sutured zooms in on the thread as a medium to examine the healing and resistance qualities of fabrics. It explores different causes of tearing injury, from physical to emotional and cultural, like diaspora and warfare. Through the lens of textiles, the exhibition aims to capture the uniqueness of each tear, its historical significance, and the narrative skills and creative expressions that can stitch up these wounds of separation.

Yeh is the director of the Hong-gah Museum in Taipei and oversees the museum’s modern Chinese embroidery collection. She is also known for her contribution to the local arts scene.

Featured artists: Yma Taru, Anna Torma, Ana Bravo Pérez, Terje Grimen, Güneş Terkol, Sara Rahbar, Jakkai Siributr, Afra Eisma.

Each year Textile Culture Net invites guest curators to join its curatorial team proposing an exhibition theme to which other curators react with an artwork proposition. This dialogue shapes a dynamic exchange of views, methods and perspectives on textile.

TCN’s online exhibitions are published on the institutions’ and guest curators’ Instagram accounts, connected by the hashtag #TextileCultureNet.

TCN’s fourth edition for 2023/2024 is co-funded by the European Union, within the framework of the prestigious Creative Europe program.
Grant Agreement n°101099994.

Yuma TARU, The Tongue of Cloth (detail), 2021.
Photo courtesy of the artist

Enzo Aït Kaci is a visual artist and art director based in Amsterdam. Trained as a digital graphic designer, he studied for a second BA in fashion design with a strong focus on visual communication and textile practices.
In his most recent works, he has explored the value of fashion imagery through the digital prism of the internet – taking into account how the videogame industry, information networks and copy-paste culture affect fashion production. He produced a method to develop fabric prints and garments using technology and craft, building a system where the images flatness and the clothes’ volume dialogue together, in a visual circuit in which 3D clothes and 2D images morph into another back and forth. As a result, the garment circulates in an endless cycle and shifts between analog and digital realities.

Second Skin is a performative project developed by Hannes Egger after a residency at Lottozero in 2023. After previewing the project in Bolzano for the third edition of BAW - Bolzano Art Weeks and later at the Green Factory Festival in Florence, we are thrilled to show it in our Kunsthalle in a newly form.
With Second Skin Hannes Egger involves the public in a performative action that triggers a reflection on the traces we leave through clothing and the dynamics of appropriation and identification we establish with them. The work stems from an inquiry around the second-hand and vintage cloth market system, explored during a residency in Prato and investigated as a phenomenon of economic history of the last fifty years.

From the 3rd of March to the 31st of May 2024.
In collaboration with The Vintage Store.
With the support of Toscanaincontemporanea 2023.

March 3, from 11 am to 9 pm, Lottozero joins Aprto - Aperture del contemporaneo a Prato. The second edition of Aprto brings together events and special openings of independent spaces active in the production of contemporary art in the city. The participating spaces to Aprto 2024 are: ChorAsis, Dryphoto contemporary art, Estuary Project Space, Lottozero, Moo, Open Studio Italo Bolano, Spazio Materia and SC17. 

In collaboration with the Municipality of Prato.