Luciano Ghersi, HyperTextile HandWeaver: Exhibition in Sri Lanka

Colombo, FEB 25-27
Exhibition on the work Italian textile artist and master weaver Luciano Ghersi

Luciano Ghersi has been involved in the creative art of handwoven textiles for the past 35 years, with international exhibitions and workshops in museums and galleries of contemporary art. He has experimented with creative weaving using divers materials, mostly recycled, from gold to barbed wire, from silk to plastic bags.
He is a professor at the Foundation for the Art of Silk (Florence) in "Kente African weaving" and "Tribal rug loom", www.fondazionelisio.org . Ghersi has written extensively on weaving and his work, has been published in international journals and periodicals on woven textiles. Ghersi has worked in weaving projects in India, Ghana, Algeria and with prison inmates in Terni (Italy).
He discovered Sri Lanka in 1992 as a country rich of culture, arts and humanity. On a later visit to Sri Lanka, Architect Designer Tilak Samarawickrema introduced him to his Master weaver Sirisena from Talagune Udu Dumbara, the oldest weaving village in the island.
He gained much experience from the unique weaving technique of Sirisena during his stay in Talagune, where he also conducted a workshop about his personal weaving techniques.

With this exhibition he wishes to pay homage to Sri Lanka, his beloved host country, where he will show 6 mini-tapestries woven in 1992, with inserted plastic letters of the Sinhala alphabet. the letters are hand sewn by anonymous craftsman.
The core of the exhibit consists of ten large "Abstract tapestries" handwoven with fashion rags, off-cuts of Made in Italy fashion fabrics. They are titled Abstract as they recall no specific subject, apart from the concrete flow of colors in the weft, like the sounds and voices of Italian Opera.
The exhibition will also display a photographic documentation of his work and two films on Ghersi will also be shown.
- A video produced by Italian public TV Rai3, showing the artist in his workshop, located in the medieval historic centre of Porchiano Del Monte, in Umbria.
- A video anthology from YouTube channel "hypertextile", produced by Ghersi.
LG LINK CORNER http://www.hypertextile.net/ghersi.html

The exhibition will be opened on Friday February 25th, 6:oo PM, and will continue till Sunday 27th February at the Desamaniya Siva Obeysekere Crafts Gallery Lak Pahana, 14 Reid Avenue Colombo 7.