Hello and welcome to another episode of Articulations.
Tamara Chalabi, co-founder of Itterate, is joined by Iliadora Marghelos,
a multidisciplinary artist based in Athens, Greece,
whose vibrant depictions of Greek typography and mythology reflect her mixed heritage.
Exploring themes of feminine roleplay, nostalgia and contemporary vitality,
Marghelos often uses steel wire screens and floating islets of coloured threads to guide her visual language.
Marghelos earned a BA in Art from Yale University and has held solo exhibitions at Barth Gallery, Los Angeles,
and Deo Horia, Athens, as well as esteemed institutions worldwide,
including the Museum of Greek Modern Culture in Athens and Louise Bourgeois' Sunday Salons in New York.
Iliadora collaborated with Inash, an organisation which employs Palestinian women in refugee camps in Lebanon,
specialised in the tradition of cross-stitch embroidery or tatris,
to produce five embroidery editions of her work, named Stoking Embers,
as part of Itterate's Variation Project that featured in Itterate's booth
with the exhibition A Running Thread as editions of Art Design Fair in Dubai from 6-9 November 2024.
Thank you for joining us on a new episode of Articulations.
Thank you for having me. A pleasure being with you.
I wanted to start by asking you why were you drawn to taking part in the Itterate Variations Project and the remaking of your work?
The idea of working together with women and connecting through embroidery added a new layer of meaning to my work.
Being able to use the same techniques such as cross-stitching that you also mentioned,
and connect through a similar creative language from a distance, opens up a new way of communicating visually.
The initiative Variations shows Itterate's commitment to engaging with various communities,
raise awareness of how diverse the art world can become when introduced properly.
Was there anything in particular that worried you about such a thing?
Do you know in terms of imagining that your work was going to be reproduced by someone else by hand,
could have a different outcome to your original work?
I expected it to be so from the beginning.
I think it's part of the process of additioning my embroideries that you expect differences,
and it can be interesting and add to the addition works.
Did the act of collaboration itself influence the final pieces in ways you hadn't anticipated?
Embroidery as a practice is a solitary meditative process that requires a lot of time alone with a needle and thread.
It's appealing to share this process with others and establish a dialogue.
What was the process involved in the making of the five editions?
When I was first approached by Itterate to produce embroideries for Inache,
the intention was to generate limited editions of five,
and I began to stitch a design that would be eloquent enough for additioning.
When the original embroidery was sent to Beirut at Inache Association,
the design was distributed to a group of five Palestinian refugee women employed by the association
that had a lot of experience in cross-stitching,
and that's how the editions came to life.
What did this collaboration mean to you?
How do you feel it added layers to your work, given your interest in both heritage and craft?
It is much more interesting and appealing to share this process with others to establish a visual dialogue.
The collaboration with Inache to create a series of editions
was a way of bridging cultural and geographic distance.
Yeah, it also creates a conversation across the borders in a way that's interesting through the work itself,
even though you haven't actually met the women directly.
I recall you mentioning that you built stories through titles and color compositions,
and wondered if you could share more about your creative process
and how this approach played out in the creation and labeling
of colors like orange sparks and red coals of the Stoking Embers series.
When I start to work on a new piece, I try to assemble various materials and create forms
that will best convey the feeling I want to communicate.
The thought process at first can be quite instinctive
and then progressively obtain meaning that will result in a title.
How did the titles come to you?
I choose color based on the overall feeling I'm portraying.
With the threads, I draw inspiration from symbolic motifs I found in nature
that are put together in a landscape of abstracted elements such as water, the sky,
the light of the sun and the moon.
These are all part of the composition.
The titles, particularly in this series of editions, Stoking Embers,
have a direct reference to color and the variations of colors you can find in burnt wood.
I know you refer to nature, to the Greek islands in particular,
but also to mythology in a larger scale.
Embroidery and weaving are both ancient practices known since antiquity.
They're mostly known to us through references in mythology
and descriptions of society at the time.
It's a practice that's always been attributed to women.
I'm interested in working on this traditional attribution of women to weaving.
Do you relate to any particular character in Greek mythology in the Odyssey, Homer's Odyssey?
We've got Penelope, we've got Ariadne, we've got Artemis, and female figures connected to weaving.
The passage of time telling stories, even Freud refers to the symbolism of weaving.
Did you resonate with this?
Definitely. The first reference you made to the Odyssey and Penelope,
what's highlighted through her weaving in the story of the Odyssey,
is how she cultivates patience and devotion and her ability to sort of undo.
It's very inspiring to be living on the grounds of a country that has such richness of culture from antiquity
and references to weaving from such an early age as feminine qualities.
In many myths, like the ones you mentioned, the story of Penelope in the Odyssey
and Ariadne, the thread is a way of showing the passage of time and qualities that women cultivate as mothers.
You began teaching yourself embroidery during your first pregnancy,
and much of your work explores themes of feminine role play.
I know you have seen women in your family use it.
So how did the craft connection to women, often passed down through generations, shape your approach to it?
It's true that the experience of pregnancy led me to embroidery.
I began this new way of illustrating a visual language to use in my work.
I grew up witnessing members of my family use threads as a means of expression.
My grandmothers were always embroidering or knitting when I was a child.
These images played a role in this newly adopted language.
That I acquired when I was expecting my first child.
There is definitely magic in describing the passage of time through the length of the thread.
How do you think motherhood influenced your artistic practice beyond the initial learning of embroidery?
I think becoming a mother has changed my life in many ways, mostly in the way I work as an artist.
Embroidery has a high tolerance to mistakes.
If you don't like it, you can cut the thread and start over.
Embroidery welcomes the evolution of time through this hand-making process and cultivates feelings.
Motherhood introduces in a woman's life, such as patience, longing, and watching growth in a physical way.
Do you find that you can replicate that in embroidery or is it another element of it that mirrors the process of mothering?
Definitely mirrors it, but also completes it.
One next to the other, they work together, able to coexist from this experience of being a mother.
With regards to the compositions of your embroidery, you have a unique language.
Visually speaking, you don't follow traditional embroidery techniques.
How do you develop this visual language, especially the floating eyelet,
that is repetitive in your embroidered cross-stitch work?
My first embroidery works were traditional cross-stitching on canvas.
These initial works had a two-dimensional feel, like drawing on paper.
The evolution of my work towards what you described, the floating eyelets and drifting away from the traditional embroidery techniques,
led to a more sculptural approach to embroidery.
There is a more dynamic presence of negative space through light and alternative surfaces I work on, such as the iron mesh as a canvas.
Would you say that there is any specific inspiration of artists that you admire, such as Louise Bourgeois or Johannes Vermeer?
Louise Bourgeois's work is very inspirational to me.
I really like the juxtaposition she does with various materials, hard and soft.
Her works have always spoken to me.
Vermeer was the master of light, and he could really achieve a high level of mastery of light.
I grew up admiring his use of light.
How do you find yourself applying it in your work or processing it and the patterns?
I'd say experimenting with other surfaces and the embroidery canvas.
My way of trying to play with light as a medium, I find that with iron mesh, these metal screens I use,
you can achieve an interesting negative space next to positive by playing with the transparency of this material
and the reflections of light through the shattering of these eyelet sign border.
Can you speak to how you choose your materials and what they represent in your storytelling?
To me, this iron lash is a material with a lot of potential to experiment with light.
It introduces various effects of positive space next to the background of shadows that form through reflection and transparency.
I experimented recently with mirror together with this iron mesh, and this adds a new reading to it.
I haven't shown it yet, but it has interesting results.
The softness of the thread together with the structural quality of metal try to illustrate a harmony between the vulnerability of feelings and the resilience of spirit.
I guess that's the dynamic I try to balance out through my works.
You explored culture at Yale for your undergraduate degree. Do you think it influences your process with your installation work?
It certainly does. It became clear to me throughout college, I could more easily express myself in a three-dimensional way.
Yale as an experience played a critical role at helping me become more self-aware in relationship to my work, acknowledging strengths and weaknesses.
What do you think of the fact that textile art as a medium or works on textile or with thread are becoming more mainstream within contemporary art today in a way we're not before?
More and more artists employing textile and thread in their work shows a will to explore in a more sensitive way the evolution of craftsmanship,
the boundaries between fine art and craftsmanship are constantly challenged and blurred.
I find that very interesting because one does not exclude the other. I like the direction this is taking.
It shows an acceptance of what used to be labeled as tradition in the context of a more patriarchal society.
Now there's more acceptance in ways of creating that were attributed to women.
I like the fact that this medium is used by men as well. So patriarchy as we knew it is definitely being challenged.
I know you've been very busy with exciting projects ahead. What's next for you? Can you tell us more about your current and future projects?
We'll see where the next few years take us. Playwork is going towards larger scales and involvement in projects that include other forms of craftsmanship.
I'm more interested in working with other artists on craftsmanship.
So collaboration with Iterar-Tex, the production of editions and collaborations on large scale installations.
I'm excited to see where it's going to go. Thank you for joining us and we're looking forward to seeing your work soon.
Thank you Tamara.