Museumgasten x Makers on materials
Discover the work of artists, makers or designers during 'Museum Guests'. Museum Guests is an in-depth programme on Sunday afternoons in which we have two 20-minute conversations with makers about their work, passion, inspiration and working process. This takes place in the exhibition, right next to their work! As a visitor of Museum Guests, there is space to ask questions to the artist guest.
Museum Guests is a new activity and is organised twice per exhibition. The first edition of Museum Guests takes place on Sunday 2 June and starts at 14:30. A ticket costs €10. That does not include admission to the museum but includes a drink you can enjoy in the TextielCafé after the event.
(Social) handling of material
During the first edition of 'Museumgasten x Makers on materials', we will talk to artist duo Marjo van Schaik and Dasha Tsapenko. Their work includes 'Tracing Gunya', a collaboration in which they delved into the rich history of the gunya, a traditional Ukrainian shepherd's coat and the material wool.
Tracing Gunya, 2022-2023. Foto: Josefina Eikenaar
Tracing Gunya, 2022-2023
In the Netherlands, sheep are mainly kept for meat or grazing purposes. Their wool is considered unusable, and the vast majority is removed and burned. Designers Dasha Tsapenko (Ukraine, 1993) and Marjo van Schaik (Venlo, 1964) started collaborating in 2022. They used the gunya, a Ukrainian woollen shepherd's coat, as a canvas for a variety of material experiments. Gunyas are warm and water-resistant due to the traditional way they are woven and the natural properties of wool from sheep in the Carpathians, a mountain range in Central Europe.
Tsapenko and Van Schaik applied various textile and dyeing techniques and materials, including hemp and mycelium, to create a wide range of gunya designs. They also experimented with traditional weaving methods to weave the supposedly unusable Dutch sheep's wool. The result surprised even second- and third-generation weavers Ganna and Ruslana Goncharuk, highlighting the wool’s value and potential.
The project also has an emotional layer. To commemorate the seed bank in Kharkiv, Ukraine, which was bombed in May 2022, the designers created a felted version of the coat with pockets for seeds. The coat symbolises the gunya’s protective qualities; it not only protects the wearer but also the flower seeds from Van Schaik's garden.
