WOOL x Cale 2014

For the 2014 CALE Festival, we invited the Polish artist NeSpoon, whose participation had two different moments: the first in May, during which she was in artistic residency, and the second in August, when she executed the interventions.

In May, NeSpoon joined various groups of women lacemakers in Póvoa da Atalaia and Souto da casa (localities), who showed her the art and the type of lace-making from the region. These were beautiful moments in which lace-making became the common language and ground between a Polish woman who didn’t know a single word of Portuguese and a group of women who didn’t speak English. During her artistic residency, NeSpoon also collaborated with the Arts Department from the Fundão Secondary School.

During the Festival, NeSpoon executed her first large-dimension painting on a building wall near Parque das Tílias (Linden Park). The old wall assigned to her evoked the signs of times past and contrasted with the mathematical harmony of the lace, suiting the theme of traditional lace perfectly.

In addition to this intervention, she created an installation with lace offered by the lacemakers and several small ceramic pieces made in the Secondary School. The installation was accompanied by the lacemakers’ traditional songs.