Analysis
Analysis by Isabelle Morlet
With passing time, Anne de Bodt weaves her stories, thread by thread, patiently and delicately exploring matter in her quiet sunlit workshop in the trees: The secret of the golden flower, The enchanted violas, The ladders of joy, The music tree, …Fluttering webs of thread and fringe, poetic words and ancient texts, sacred signs and hanging notes spin an elegant and wise illustration of a book, a trip, a train of thought.
You need to look at length, to let yourself daydream and get carried away: by the serene musicality of the tapestry, its emotional power and mystery, the poetry of the find strips of winged paper, the gentle shimmer of light. The works of Anne de Bodt, fragile vessels woven from twigs and sails, sail on spirituality and joy to symbolic shores in the wake of her Rafts of happiness.
Research and meditation in silken thread, linen and paper
Weaving has a spiritual dimension for Anne de Bodt. When the fingers weave, the mind meditates. “ Real intuition can only come from calm concentration”, she maintains. “ Knitting and weaving threads is often a ritual and a symbolic activity in every cultural – a discipline that attempts to bring harmony in diversity, and unity in reality. It is an activity that promotes a certain form of meditation, and has the power of an incantation.
Anne de Bodt is one of the contemporary artist-weavers who have undertaken a quest. For her, weaving also an exploration, a path, a long story that she tells by touching materials and combining techniques. She actually plans her tapestries like a tale or the recital of an intimate experience.
Anne de Bodt came back from her first trip to India with a sense of the invisible intimately associated with everyday life, the shock of colours and the cradle of music. Since that time, at the pace of her inner needs, she has used weaving to try to express this non-knowledge, the invisible that gives spirituality to matter, the timeless music, hidden in the heart of appearances, that keeps the world dancing.
She chose paper to tackle a wider variety of themes of expression than could be reached by traditional tapestry materials. Calligraphy, notes of music, imaginary letters, poems, ancient words, infinitesimal traces of nature, catch on the threads and fibres to become a mysterious, lightweight writing.
In her opinion, there is no real need to read the texts integrated in the weave, often taken from the works of Oriental philosophers. They live in the material like a mark of wisdom, and a sacred veil.
In the intertwining weave …
I entered where I did not know
This knowledge that does not know
is of such great power
That scholars can never have it
by argument
Because their knowledge cannot fail
to hear an understanding
transcending all science.
John of the Cross