Interview with Eva Cisárová-Mináriková
Editorial board
Textile visual artist and lecturer Eva Cisárová-Mináriková studied textile design at the Secondary technical school of textile industry in Brno and graduated from the Academy of fine arts and design in Bratislava at the studio headed by prof. Peter Matejka. She makes non-commissioned independent tapestries, in which she emphasizes haptic stimulation of textile materials. In her works, the author systematically refers to historical textiles, quotations of historical tapestries and textiles in her designs as well as historical research. She has been a head lecturer at the studio of independent textile work of the Academy of fine arts and design in Bratislava since 1990. Eva Cisárová-Mináriková formed a course for textile materials restoration in 1995 that operates under the studio. She has presented her work at prominent exhibitions, both in Slovakia and abroad and her designs are included in the Slovak and foreign collections. Organisers of international lectures, workshops and symposiums invite her to participate in their events. She is a resilient organiser of excursions, study visits and exhibitions for her students in Slovakia and abroad.
She was grown up in Cífer, the village notable for its folk embroidery-making tradition and education as well as for the Izabella Club. She learnt the loom-weaving technique at the secondary school. She conducted research of the Cífer embroidery-making style as part of her academy graduation work.
Her current themes include recycled textile, vintage textiles, textile girlish monograms, fragments of underwear, embroidery pieces, interior accessories, combined techniques, hand-made paper, manual or machine felting, frotage, collage, sewing, accumulation, pigment and natural materials painting, format altering etc. which she recycles or re-installs in new surroundings.
She was the only artist for years who made so-called “quotations” and weaved fragments of historical tapestries into her designs and produced a composition differing in colours, materials, techniques and sometimes went so far that she made three-dimensional works. Producing such designs, she mastered many technical and creative problems. By assigning her academy students the projects requiring the research of historical fibres and ancient folk and historical textile techniques, Eva Cisárová-Mináriková seeks to preserve textile memory of our predecessors and to give her students skills that help them grow artistically.
She started a course of historical textile materials restoration at the AFAD 12 ago. „A textile restorer must have good knowledge of textile history so I decided to open the subject for all textile departments as soon as I had started to teach at the academy. Besides, a future textile restorer must have good knowledge of and be partially skilled in machine and traditional Slovak textile techniques. The same subjects are part of education of textile artists. The said structure has been a part of the concept of education I introduced into the studio of independent textile creation when I came to teach at the academy in 1990.“
„I do not have time to work on my creative ideas since I am at the academy. Textile miniature allows me to try and test techniques and projects in the field of three-dimensional objects that I could not do in a larger scale. Multi-strand weft technique from silver wire and fibres was used for several such objects. It is an old technique that can be improved to meet current requirements. Then, I returned to transparent three-dimensional lace and thread objects.“