TERE CHAD

Abrazo Entramado or ‘Woven Hug’, is a participatory textile installation that seeks to embrace the city with a pair of textile arms filled with scrap material and covered in designs and fabrics embroidered by the city’s inhabitants. This project invites us to reconnect after the pandemic. Using over 2000 pieces of cloth, recycled by the community of Monterrey, Mexico, a group of over 170 participants succeeded in embroidering the 20 metre long Woven Hug. The piece was exhibited at LABNL, Lab Cultural Ciudadano (Cultural Lab), CONARTE (Arts Council Nuevo León State) between April and October 2022. Afterwards the piece was exhibited at the gardens of the cultural centre Centro Cultural Plaza Fátima, San Pedro, Nuevo León, Mexico between October 2022 and March 2023. The skeleton of the piece remains in LABNL archives. 

 

Tere Chad and Cordelia Rizzo were invited to develop Woven Hug 2.0 at Flowerfield Arts Centre, Northern Ireland. A volume of over 2 cbm of pieces of fabrics were recycled by Northern Ireland’s community attending Flowerfield Arts Centre, R-Space Gallery, Ulster University and Queen’s University Belfast, to facilitate embroidery workshops at Flowerfield Arts Centre, VAST (Victims & Survivors Trust, Belfast) and R-Space Gallery. A group of nearly 200 participants donated over 120 embroideries to stitch to the 20 metre long Woven Hug. The participatory textile installation will hug the façade of Flowerfield Arts Centre to welcome its visitors until the end of August (weather permitting). The project was made in partnership with the Linen Biennale and Conflict Textiles, supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs and Causeway Coast & Glens Borough Council.