Artworks

44 x 80 in
111.8 x 203.2 cm

In 552 AD, the Byzantine Emperor sent two Christian monks to China to steal the secrets of silk production. With silkworm larvae hidden in the hollows of their walking sticks, the monks slipped past the guards to the Silk Road and returned to Byzantium with their wiggly cargo intact, marking the end of China’s silk supremacy. In the late 1980s, Bhakti Ziek wove this textile-themed spy thriller into her thesis project at the Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Ziek’s early-career magnum opus explores many of the themes that would inspire her throughout her half-century weaving career: the cross-cultural interchange of textile technologies and motifs, knowledge-sharing in craft community, and the intellect-driven selection of materials and techniques that become storytelling conduits. Ancestral inheritance was also on Ziek’s mind as she wove this piece: the third panel references her father, who was a gifted cellist.

To execute the animal silhouettes and other natural motifs in Wheel of Life, Ziek stretched and hand-painted the weft of some panels before starting the weaving process. Ziek writes, “I have a tool where I could wind out my weft to the width of the weaving. Then I wound the thread back and forth as if I was weaving, making sure I had sections of thread that would fit on my bobbins. I painted the wefts with textile pigment, and then had to keep them in order as I unwound them onto my bobbins, and make sure I started at the correct end of the thread and side of the weaving to get them to fall into place. These were back picks of the lampas and I couldn’t see them as I wove but if I started correctly they did work out.”