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Masha Rubin
Knitting Fate
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The image of knitting or spinning as a quintessential mystical act is found in many cultural myths alluding to the female world. Knitting is a metaphor for the woman's ideal role, a source of creation outlining the thread of life and the line of fate. According to this perception, women weave the fate of their loved ones, preserve their lives and dictate their natures. While knitting, the woman draws into herself, engaging in the intimate creation of every detail and every loop, integrating the objects of her passion and yearning into yarn.
Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper provides me with a background for spinning the worlds of fateful knitting. At the dramatic moment when Christ reaffirms to his disciples that there is a traitor in their midst, he loses his defenses, exposes his fate, and the thread of his life is cut short. In Knitting Fate, the myth of the male world, swathed in drama, hostility, and strife, is metamorphosed into an ideal scene where thirteen women knit protection, life, and love. The women's postures correspond with those of the disciples in the original painting, together constituting a harmonious reality. As opposed to the table which represents the need to tie the participants together while concealing their interrelations, in my work the intimacy between the knitters is exposed in order to reinforce an overt encounter underlain by a latent secret.
Another myth addressed in the work is the story of the Moirae, the three Fates of Greek mythology, who controlled the destiny of every mortal and spun his fate. In Knitting Fate, the myth's latent aspects are reflected in the women's roles, oscillating between poles of creation, destruction, chaos, and infinity, poles which are knitted to form a point of equilibrium in the composition.
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