Natalia Zagórska-Thomas
About the artist
Natalia Zagórska-Thomas is a Polish-British visual artist, curator and a museum conservator specialising in textiles. She owns and runs a small independent contemporary art gallery in London called Studio ExPurgamento.
She has exhibited her work and performed in the UK, Poland and elsewhere including:
Victoria and Albert Museum (London), Sotheby’s Contemporary (London), Royal Festival Hall (London), Swedenborg House (London), Centro des Artes Plasticas y Deseno, (Havana), Lokal 30 (Warsaw), Isolo Gallery (Verona), Fitzrovia Chapel (London), Gallerie Kornerpark (Berlin), Art Basel (Hong Kong) , Tabula Rasa Gallery (London) and others.
Dynamic Drape Coefficient
“Dynamic Drape Coefficient” measures how a fabric’s ability to drape and deform adapts when subjected to movement, rotation, weight and external pressures.
A silk parachute is a contradiction and a conundrum: an object constructed from what is considered a fragile, valuable and rare material redolent of excess, comfort and luxury. Yet its application reveals its extraordinary natural strength capable of withstanding extreme conditions and carrying weight far in excess of its own. It is a miracle of engineering designed to carry a human being safely through the air at impossible heights. It is a machine for saving lives. Yet it is just a piece of plain weave, protenatious fibre supported by some very clever cutting and very carefully applied stitching. Its simultaneous strength and fragility (and the necessary interplay of those qualities) gives it an enormous metaphorical power to express the lived experience of anyone who is habitually dismissed as weak, pliable and delicate while in reality – universally relied upon to carry the weight of society, global economy and the future of entire humanity upon their shoulders uncomplainingly, mostly for free and without applause, status or recognition.
Natalia Zagorska-Thomas has embarked on an embroidery project of a WW2 silk parachute. Throughout the festival she will continue to stitch into its silk fabric. Some other participants of the festival as well as members of the audience will be able to join her by invitation.