The Meta-Tapestry continues the conscious excavation and reconstruction processes I am performing in the #RuinsRiot project through the use of ancient materials and techniques. Ancient Mesopotamia was culturally defined by the art of weaving, and the magnificence of Babylonian and Assyrian tapestries was unanimously proclaimed by the writers of antiquity.

Like all the other works in the project, the Meta-Tapestry incorporates elements of contemporaneity’s material culture: a plastic construction mesh serves as a canvas for the delicate threads. The juxtaposition of the materials has brought the tapestry into its ‘meta’ state, taking it beyond the status of a textile: it serves as a commentary on the need to take care of ancient monuments through restoration, as well as turns the textile into a shield, one can wrap around ruins to use as a protective layer without touching them.


Medium: Wool thread, plastic construction mesh
Size: H110 x W310

The Meta-Tapestry

Mushkhushshu, presiding over my imagined museum, is omnipresent in it. His eyes are everywhere, his image is scattered all over the room, becoming flesh in the sculpture of him, gazing upon the visitor from the relief. The image of him multiplies in the smaller sculptures - the Beasties - phantasmagorical and inescapable. Just like Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus anthropomorphised by Walter Benjamin, they are endowed by their knowledge of time, they see one single catastrophe, where we see only a chain of events. Dressed in bright colours and splashes of contemporary art, the Beasties await, patiently, still living history, ready to leap into action, to make whole what has been destroyed.

Medium: Ceramics, glaze, oxides, pigments
Size: H25 x W47 x D15 each 

#RuinsRiot: The Beasties

History presents us with many riddles and puzzles to which we cannot always find an answer or an explanation. During the work on the #RuinsRiot project, a series of reliefs came to being. As I arranged and rearranged tiles, scattered all over my studio, I found surprising harmony and accordance between pieces that belonged to different parts of the large EXITIUM relief when accidentally placed together. The unique patterns of my imagined artifact, formed through each new combination, made me think of the puzzle of history and the archive – how it shapes our relationship with the past and affects the construction of historical meaning. Who defines it? How does its definition affect the conditions that enable the history to be written? And what role do accidental or inexplicable collisions play?

Medium: Ceramics, glazes
Size: H35 x W37 cm each

#RuinsRiot: Puzzles series. 

I'm an artist painter from Poland, basic in Manchester.
My paintings present a unique combination of abstract, figurative imagery and drawing expressed with emotion and poetic sensitivity. I create in a vigorous and often spontaneous manner lead frequently by emotions. My images convey a consciousness that implores us to seek out the details and subtleties of nature and explore our relationship with it. It is often the unintended and subliminal mind that creates the initial medley of shapes and spaces and the artist is the one who makes the choice of exaggerating or diminishing various areas and characters. I let myself be carried away without resistance in the direction indicated by the hand of an intuitive line, color, and form. My stimulating expression of environment brings each viewer into an effervescent, playful and exciting world full of organic forms and shapes. Each piece might be a peculiar exploration of natural forms of botanical, animal and human shape. Somewhat the combination of illustrative and abstract styles gives my work a dreamy quality that transports the imagination into a whole other world that is waiting to be discovered.

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Mila Dolman

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