KNOT KNOW: Nazzy Beglari, “Ikat and Abr Textiles”, and Dr. Mi You, “Silk as a currency”, 15 July 2021, 6 PM

The second series of events takes the Central Asian ikat fabric as a starting point to investigate historical, economical and cultural distribution around the Silk Road. Gathering atlas silk from the Xinjiang Region along with ikat from Central Asia regions and a kaftan work by textile contemporary designer Nazzy Beglari, KNOT KNOW goes beyond the ethnographical object to suggest post-colonial perspectives on the cotton trade in the region.

The lecture by curator Mi You titled “Silk as a Currency” combines hearsays, histories, and speculations on silk both as an artefact, a cultural metaphor, as well as a cross-border currency and cultural currency in the past and today.

To listen to the podcast of Mi You, “Silk as a Currency”, click here.

Nazzy Belgari is a fashion designer who is interested in relations with master weavers from Asia. Her ikat coats and kaftans are collages of as many as seven different textiles with the natural patterns used in traditional textiles.

Dr. Mi You is a curator, researcher and lecturer at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Her long-term research and curatorial projects oscillate between the two extremes of the ancient and futuristic. She works with the Silk Road as a figuration for deep-time, deep-space nomadic imageries, and old and new networks/technologies.