“…Latvian textile Artist and Designer Gundega Strautmane has studied textile design at the Institute for Experimental Textile Design of the University of Art Berlin, the Art Academy of Latvia and the Riga Technical University. She has produced a series of experimental and artistic design projects, collaborated with the textile industry including the Swiss textile company Creation Baumann and the pigment producer Merck in Germany. Currently she is producing a collection of furniture textiles for the furniture company Anna Barons in Latvia.
In her latest Art projects, Straumane has employed the Braille code in order to create artifacts perceptible to both the blind and people with eyesight. By drawing a thin thread between the black relief points in the white paper landscape, she constructs new meanings and her textile compositions become texts where ornament is a carrier of coded information. In the project “Destruction” she played with the word “destruction” whereas in her project Point….Line she has created lace-like ornaments using phrases from Catholic prayers…”
Anda Klavina, Art Critic and Curator
“…Even though Gundega Strautmane’s works can be considered as “the modernization of tradition”, their ornamental patterns are distinctive and significantly different from the traditional form. The artist has used Braille characters to transcribe phrases from Christian prayers, writing them out in raised, tactile beads. These sets of bead characters are arranged in a symmetrical rhythm, both spelling out the text of the prayer and creating an impressive, decorative pattern. As a result, the works are an illustration of a classic conceptualist path, with an unexpected twist: the text is first of all made into a three-dimensional physical structure. It may be read and its content perceived only through touch;
repetitions and the ornamental arrangement of sets of repetitions provide not just a literary experience, but a sensually aesthetic one as well…”
Iliana Veinberga, Art Critic
