There is no way to know the future, but we look forward througt the past. This exhibition is a three-stage journey. The history of the Taller Mexicano de Gobelinos –made of movement and weaving– is written with textiles. This interweaving conveys and convers us. It´s a promenade, a braid, and a turn. We move on while returning and we turna round to continue.

The history of the technique developed in the Taller Mexicano de Gobelinos and in the High Warp (Haute Lisse) tapestry workshops –known as Gobelins– that preceded the Taller in the same area, is that of those who worked it, of those who appropriated it, and transformed it by practicing the techniqued, retelling it whith their own words which are the textiles, their inscription, their forms of weaving: one that each weaver tells in the works entrusted to them, also transforming them.

Therefore, this exhibition is an account of transformative appropriation that remains in a hsitorical document, a tapestry made in this workshop. In each one we cand read a fragment that is, in turn, intertwined with the stories of those who participate in any aspect of the process of creation of the Gobelin.

Gobelins take their name from Jehan Gobelin, a wool dyer who had a workshop in Paris and archieved great fame during the fifteenth century due to the shades of red he obtained, known as “Gobelin scarlet”. His fame grew to the point of naming the area and a river with his surname, where various royal workshops were held under the management of Jean- Baptiste Colbert, thus creating the Manufacture Royale des Gobelins, in which the designs, both of the tapestries and all types of furniture were executed under the supervision of the royal painter Charles Le Brun, who was the director and chief designer from 1963 to 1690.

The tapestries made whith the High Warp technique have particular characteristics: they can reproduce on a large scale complex images with an infinite color palette; since the dyes are prepared manually and strands of different shades can be combined at will. In addition, their materials and monumentality give them lyrical, acoustic, and spatial qualities that affect the perception of the environment and the emotional space. The weaving requires the interpretation of shapes and colors, while the weaver practices his mastery and sensitivity when reproducing the image.