Teresa Lanceta: Farewell to the Rhombus at Azkuna Zentroa

“Farewell to the Rhombus” is an exhibition hosted by Azkuna Zentroa that features the work of Teresa Lanceta. Coproduced with Fundación Montemadrid’s La Casa Encendida and curated by Nuria Enguita Mayo, the show offers a tour of this artist’s personal universe. Weaves, geometric designs and folk art intertwine with the emotional nuances and complexities of an investigation centred on communities of women weavers in the Middle Atlas. The exhibition features woven fabrics, paintings, drawings, a text and several videos compiled from her interviews with both women of that region and relatives who migrated to Spain.

In addition to Lanceta’s work, the exhibition includes the work of five young artists interested in traditional craftsmanship and migration. There are also two collaborations: Nicolas Malevé, who created a digital map of patterns and objects of the Middle Atlas, and Lot Amorós, producer of an interactive audio-visual installation based on a binary code.

“Farewell to the Rhombus” is the third large exhibition by Teresa Lanceta dedicated to the fabrics and knowledge of women weavers from the Middle Atlas, a project that the artist started in 1985. Since then, the artist’s interest in everything surrounding this manufacture and in the basic structure of these fabrics has led her to explore in depth their material nature.

Since the mid-1970s, Lanceta made the decision to weave as a form of artistic expression, pushing the limits of what is understood as art. Linking her work to Middle Atlas textile materials, traditions and techniques, weaving has allowed Teresa Lanceta to understand a primeval and universal code that clearly manifests its internal law, a law that reaches beyond physical, temporal and cultural borders and which nurtures creative imagination. Her work defends the usefulness of collective art and creation as opposed to the idea of the individual genius. Collective art as the result of the creativity of specific people, an open source code that can be read, transformed and transmitted.