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All the small things
During their residency at Designregio Kortrijk, three young international designers, Yufei Gao, Julie Merlino and Eszter Nagy, were inspired by Kortrijk as a textile city and border region. With projects ranging from linen border posts to moiré effects and digital tapestries, they explore the intersections between tradition and technology.
All the Small Things shows the results of Designers in Residence Kortrijk by Designregio Kortrijk 2024. Each year, a jury selects three recently graduated designers from different creative disciplines. They are given three months to develop a concept, working together with citizens, entrepreneurs, education and society. The three Designers in Residence, Yufei Gao, Julie Merlino and Eszter Nagy, resided in Kortrijk from September to December 2024.
Kortrijk is remembered for two things: as a textile city since the Middle Ages and as a border town. Since the Treaty of Kortrijk in 1820, 300 stone boundary markers have marked the border with France. In 2021, Belgium became a little bigger when a farmer moved that border by 2.29 metres. Yufei Gao explores this fascinating history in her video essay entitled A border is not a boundary. She built a border post out of linen and filmed it while wandering along the French-Belgian border. In doing so, she commemorates how people, industry and migration are intertwined.
Light reacts differently to materials: it reflects, refracts or creates a shine. Like when you look at Belgian damask, a traditional weaving technique for which Kortrijk was famous in the sixteenth century. The complex structure of the fabric and the patterns incorporated into it provide an interesting viewing experience. Julie Merlino was fascinated by this dynamic. With A change in frequency, she explores fabrics that shift dynamically based on the viewer's perception and position. The research is based on phenomena such as the moiré motion effect and makes microstructures visible.
A binary logic connects the worlds of computers and weaving. In computers, it determines whether or not a pixel is drawn; in weaving, the same binary reasoning takes place when the warp thread is lifted or lowered. Eszter Nagy interweaves craftsmanship with the digital world. Starting with a napkin from the Texture collection, designed in 1987 by Marc Van Hoe and woven by Verilin in Kortrijk, her work Edge or No Edge transforms local icons into digital copies. She creates a dialogue between pixels and fabric threads in her installation, where a tapestry is placed next to LED screens.
relive all the small things
