Bold Abstractions: Textiles from Central Asia & Iran
January 24, 2010 – May 9, 2010

For millennia, nomads have wandered across the steppes and oases of Central Asia in search of pasture for their herds and traveled along the famed trading route, the “Silk Road,” which stretched from China to the Mediterranean. Bold Abstractions: Textiles from Central Asia & Iran presents mementos of this nomadic culture in a dazzling display of mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth-century traditional garments, personal adornment, and domestic accessories.

A feast for the eyes, this exhibition includes brilliant-hued Uzbek ikat-dyed robes and exquisitely embroidered Turkmen mantles. Boldly conceived Kyrgyz felted tent trappings contrast in texture and technique with smaller-scale Persian masterpieces in the form of woven pile carpets that once faced animal pack bags. Silver-gilt, nielloed, and gem-inlaid ornaments in their original context were beautiful signifiers of gender, age, and clan identity. Throughout the exhibition visitors can delight in bold designs in the form of highly stylized animal, vegetal, and cosmological symbols. With origins in some ancient, unwritten compendium, these motifs allude to abundance and well-being, basic desires of all peoples past and present.

Functional, portable and aesthetically pleasing, textiles have always been indispensable to the nomadic peoples of Eurasia. The nomadic peoples of Central Asia and Iran continue the centuries-old tradition of producing textiles.

This exhibition originated at Mingei International Museum, San Diego Ca. and was curated at both Mingei and CAFAM by Rochelle Kessler.

About the Curator

Rochelle Kessler is an independent scholar and curator who has been active in the museum and academic fields for over twenty-five years. She received graduate degrees in South Asian studies at the University of Arizona and in art history at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Her areas of expertise and interest include the art, religion, and culture of greater Asia and the Islamic world.

Rochelle has held curatorial positions at Mingei International Museum, San Diego; Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University Museums. She also served as collections manager and educator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art; and was an international exhibition project liaison for the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History and Cooper- Hewitt National Design Museum during the 1985 Festival of India in the US.