Azra Aksamija in RugLife at The Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco

Azra Aksamija, Palimpsest of 89, 2017. Installation, single-channel animation. Screenshot of project. Courtesy of the artist.
Azra Aksamija, Palimpsest of 89, 2017. Installation, single-channel animation. Screenshot of project. Courtesy of the artist.

RugLife
December 14, 2024 – April 20, 2025
The Museum of Craft and Design
San Francisco, CA

Azra Aksamija’s Palimpsest of ’89 (2017) is on view as part of the group exhibition, RugLife, at The Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco, CA.

Palimpsest of ’89 is an artistic installation exploring the role of Sarajevo’s cultural institutions in shaping the common heritage of Yugoslavia. The project was produced for The Heritage of 1989 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (Moderna galerija) Ljubljana, which reenacted the Second Yugoslav Documents, the largest retrospective of Yugoslav art before the 1990s Yugoslav breakup. Palimpsest of ’89 visualizes how the region’s history has been “written and rewritten” through the work of institutions that have been framing and preserving the common heritage.

Image Credits: Azra Aksamija, Palimpsest of 89, 2017. Installation, single-channel animation. Screenshot of project. Courtesy of the artist.

The installation is conceived both as exhibition furniture and as a conceptual structuring format that organizes the exhibition through specific historical contexts. The first idea translates into the exhibition space using museum shipping crates, representing the museum as an institution that preserves cultural memory and frames common heritage. The second idea is articulated by a “palimpsestual carpet,” proposing a model for thinking about the creation of the common heritage through the weaving of integrative and disintegrative narratives and policies related to cultural institutions. Taken together, these two ideas inform the design of the exhibition architecture in the form of museum shipping boxes painted with carpet patterns that provide the historical context for the interpretation of artworks on display.

Image Credits: Azra Aksamija, Palimpsest of 89, 2017. Installation, single-channel animation. Screenshot of project. Courtesy of the artist.

Guest curated by Ginger Gregg Duggan and Judith Hoos Fox of c2-curatorsquared, RugLife features the work of 14 contemporary artists from around the world who use the rug as a medium to address cultural issues such as religion, technology, social justice, housing, and the environment. RugLife examines this functional-object-turned-artpiece in its contemporary form, as it is manipulated, reinterpreted, and made new.

c2-curatorsquared has selected a diverse roster of artists and designers from the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, working across a variety of media including yarn, cardboard, repurposed carpets, and hair combs. The artwork featured in this exhibition is divided into four thematic sections: Interweaving Past and Present, Patterning a Communal Experience, Delineating a Sense of Place, and Looming Politics.

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