This is cast in polyester resin.
It's a cast in which I work
with different categories.
One of the basic categories
is the carpet.
This is a rather precise carving -
- in the pattern of
a Persian nomad carpet -
- from the Qashqa'i tribe.
It's carved in Styropor plates.
It's a thin, rather soft
type of plastic.
I've chosen Styropor
because it frays when you cut it.
This gives a special imprint.
This is made like some kind of
gigantic puzzle.
Each little piece is hand-carved.
Not only with a marquetry inlayer
and not only on one side, -
- but on both sides
to make the lines come alive.
To make it less uniform
and mechanical.
The time aspect, the time it took me
to make this, -
- more or less mimics the time it took
to weave the carpet.
Around a year and a half
that I somehow give back.
It's a way of mimicking
a cultural space.
The ornamental,
the Persian nomadic space.
I mimic it in a contemporary material,
with respect, -
- and invest my own body
and time in it.
I've cast
some coloured textiles in it.
I knit these textiles myself.
I knit most of my own textiles.
It's a way of shifting it back to
the textile space.
But this isn't just any old carpet.
It's a very special carpet.
It's the carpet that you can normally
see in the Freud Museum -
- on his psychoanalysis couch.
So it has a lot of history -
- in the space of Western culture.
I'm not only referencing
Persian nomadic culture, -
- I'm also referencing
our own space of conception -
- which to a great extent
also builds on -
- the developments of
Sigmund Freud -
- from approximately 1870-1910.
He achieved those developments -
- by having some of his patients
lie on his couch.
And this carpet
lay under them.
