Weaving Roots

Weaving Roots

Bärenzwinger

Installation views ‘Weaving Roots’, Claudia Hill & Jared Gradinger, Bärenzwinger, Berlin, 25.3.–5.6. 2022. Photo: Juan Saez.

From March 25, 2022 until June 5, 2022

“Weaving Roots” brings together two artistic individuals and practices who explore the idea of the garden and its social function as a place of community building in different ways. Weaving and roots, interweaving and rooting are thereby experienced as concrete actions.

Jared Gradinger co-creates a garden that will blossom and flourish on the outdoor terraces of the Bärenzwinger. In collaboration with Nature as a partner, the choreographer, dancer and gardener creates a participatory place for development, participation and transformation. The artist and designer Claudia Hill brings a 125-year-old high loom for tapestry weaving to the Bärenzwinger. The loom acts as a social sculpture, a site for networking and thus not only as a production instrument of textile material, but above all as a physical medium of communication.

Claudia Hill and Jared Gradinger both respond in their work to the conditions on site at the Bear Kennel and create a space of dwelling, healing and magic. There are cycles and connections to the body, to bones, to organic matter, to metabolism, phases of life. The permeability of both gardens to the immediate environment, the surrounding park and its neighbourhood, is an essential part of the process – a social process between art and nature.

During the period from March 24 to May 5, seven public Co-Weaving Sessions with Claudia Hill will be offered at the Bärenzwinger. During the Co-Weaving Sessions, Claudia Hill shares her experience of weaving with interested visitors on a weekly basis and invites them to weave together. The starting material is silk fabric that has been plant-dyed on site and stretched across the room, as well as other materials from Hill’s textile collection.

baerenzwinger.berlin

Installation views ‘Weaving Roots’, Claudia Hill & Jared Gradinger, Bärenzwinger, Berlin, 25.3.–5.6. 2022. Photo: Juan Saez.

Installation views ‘Weaving Roots’, Claudia Hill & Jared Gradinger, Bärenzwinger, Berlin, 25.3.–5.6. 2022. Photo: Juan Saez.