Art and the craftsman: contemporary practices - Yole Devaux
Abstract
Yole Devaux talks about the practice of textile art through her career as a practitioner and teacher in the Tapestry and Textile Art workshop at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. She traces the history of this medium, particularly through the changes she witnessed at the Lausanne Biennials in the 1970s. On one side were the defenders of a tapestry made from a cartoon by a painter, who came together in France with the magazine La navette. On the other, a group of designers led by Michel Thomas-Penette were campaigning in the pages of the Art textile magazine for new approaches in which textiles were fully asserted as a medium. Yole Devaux also tells us about his discovery of the work of Daniel Graffin. At a time when what came to be known as Fiber Art was being born, she nevertheless nuances these oppositions through the example of the collaboration between Thomas Gleb and Pierre Daquin, and takes a general look at the practices of smooth, high smooth and low smooth tapestry. She goes on to present her own visual work and the work of students in the textile workshop. She defended the work of the hand in tapestry, weaving and lace. She mentions Tim Ingold and the "makers", who are close to her relationship with "making" and the intelligence of the hand.
Yole Devaux was born in 1956 in Etterbeek, Brussels. Full professor of the "Tapestry/Textile Arts" course at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, Ecole supérieure des Arts since 2001. Has taught workshops at the Universitatea de Arta si design din Cluj-Napoca (Romania), the University of Vilnius, Faculty of Fine Arts (Lithuania) and the ESBA (Angers). Responsible for international relations at ARBA-ESA from 1997 to 2009. Member of the Cultural Council of TAMAT Centre de la Tapisserie, des arts muraux et des arts textiles de la Communauté française de Belgique in Tournai. From 2009 to 2017. Member of the Development Council of the Cité internationale de la Tapisserie et de l'art tissé in Aubusson. Exhibitions in Belgium, France, Spain, Netherlands, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Japan, Morocco.
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