Interview with Silvia Fedorová
Adriena Pekárová
Academic painter Silvia Fedorová (1945), a textile artist, studied at the Academy of Applied Art in Prague in the sixties with Antonín Kybal, the greatest figure of the Czechoslovak textile art. She spent two terms at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. She was still a student when she exhibited at the renowned biennial in Lausanne in 1969. Her tapestries from the seventies and eighties are exhibited in Slovak and Czech galleries. She often takes part in international events until today and her textile jewellery and accessories can be seen in galleries of Austria, Germany, Finland, Italy, Denmark and elsewhere. Her creative approach to the techniques of the bobbin lace has brought her a number of international awards.
Upon her rise to the professional scene Silvia Fedorová took hold of the expansion of the textile tapestry into space. Later on, mostly by reason of the bobbin lace technique she has moved to smaller dimensions. Her work is based on traditional techniques but through experimenting with materials, forms and meanings and the study of the possibilities of the minutest details of technical skill relevant to the material she comes with a range of new properties generating new forms. In the mid-eighties she created a purely geometric bobbin lace structure. Her work with a transparent structure culminated in 1989 with her wire installation created in cooperation with J. Kunovská in which the authors used readymade wire fabric and shaped it only.
The next phase of Fedorova’s creation was greatly influenced by the foundation of Galéria X/ Gallery X in 1990. The existence of the gallery lead her to the design – to producing things for sale for demanding customers. The project with ÚĽUV in the period of 1993 – 1994 is one of those that were designed to create valuable utility things. She designed cloaks based on folk costume cuts. In her creation she keeps revisiting the theme of hats. She started making them in the eighties. In mid-nineties she made a collection that saw great success at the exhibition Schmuck – Šperk, in which she presented the hat as a distinct textile jewel.
S. Fedorová has tried out diverse materials in her work not only natural but also wire, plastic wrap (bags), silicone, paper. She finds inspiration in different materials, each having its specific properties, offering a new quality and determining new types of jewellery.
The name of S. Fedorová is associated with rich exhibition activism. She gets involved in exhibitions organisationally and as a curator. Nine years ago she initiated the national exhibition Textile Miniature. Today the exhibition has gone international with its level steadily increasing.