Isabella Ducrot

The artist has been invited by the Museum of Civilisations to explore, together with the institution's Curators, the heritage of clothing, accessories, ceremonial and everyday textiles that are kept in the showcases and storerooms. From prehistoric archaeology to Italian folk arts and traditions and the systems of thought, symbolism, narratives and rituals of African, American, Asian and Oceanian cultures, the textile collections are among the most fascinating and at the same time fragile in the Museum of Civilisations, and for this reason they are also the most rarely exhibited. The gaze of the artist, who for decades has been confronted with textile cultures from all over the world, has been an opportunity for the museum to be observed from the outside and to discover countless points of connection between the heritage it preserves and the practice of an artist for whom textiles are not just an everyday material but a millenary tool of expression and communication between epochs, territories and cultures.