…explores the textile heritage of the Twente region and incorporates this into an installation on how women have used textile and needlework in the context of resilience and resistance.
During her trajectory, Şirin wants to explore the textile heritage of Twente. She wants to use possible conclusions in her work-in-progress interactive installation in the form of stories, design ideas or visual information that will eventually go into the work.
“My goal is to discover stories or visual elements that would spark some inspiration and find their place in different forms and styles in the intended textile installation.”
This project is a continuation of her Şirin’s research in exploring the long relationship of the needlework of politics, gender and power, and especially its potential for resisting and challenging the limitations of patriarchy. It intends to read embroidery, and textile work in general, as unarchivable records of women’s experiences that have historically been dismissed.
“With this new research, I want to tap into the region’s textile past and see if I can bring any stories to light.”
About Şirin
Şirin Bahar Demirel is a filmmaker and visual artist, working with moving image, collage and photography. Her works explore home, mis/displacement and workings of memory in its broadest sense, through their relationships with objects and places, highlighting the underlying gender roles. She tells personal stories rooted in social realities with a playful approach, and experiments with the dialogue between archival and found images and her own creations. In recent years, her artistic focus has shifted towards exploring the silenced and overlooked stories of women, both in public and private spheres.
She studied cinema at Galatasaray University in Istanbul and Artistic Direction of Cultural Projects at Paul Valéry University in France. Film festivals and group exhibitions that she participated in include IDFA, Kassel Dokfest, Ars Electronica, Transmediale, Sharjah Film Platform and Istanbul Museum of Modern Art screenings.
Former trajectory
Şirin is working on an interactive installation project that brings together e-textiles, touch sensors, projection mapping, and experimental animation. The goal is to create an installation where viewers are invited to touch embroidery patterns and trigger videos to emerge from the fabric, telling stories of how women use(d) needlework to resist and challenge the limitations of a patriarchal society. Within Cross-TIC’s Time-Based Media research trajectory, I will investigate the technical feasibility of this project, explore potential possibilities of materials, and conduct hands-on experimentation. The aim of the research is to learn how to weave different mediums together to activate multiple senses and make the public a crucial element of the work.
