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Visitation VII & VIII

2022 -2023

wool and over-dyed cotton on indigo-dyed warp
infinitely expandable and interconnected with Visitation I - VI

exhibition views: Let Me Take You There, Doris McCarthy Gallery, University of Toronto Scarborough

"Reimagining cultural archetypes, myths and symbols to engage themes of dispersion and transcendence, Alberta-based artist Miruna Dragan creates works that offer themselves as tools for meta/physics. In her infinitely expandable rug work, Visitation, VII & VIII (2023), Dragan reinterprets a symbolic geometric motif prevalent in Romanian crafts, expanding on the cross-cultural allegory of the tree of life and entwining myth and science into a living ecosystem of dyes and fibres. The image of the tree as axis mundi – a channel connecting all aspects of life and death from the underworld to the heavens – appears around the globe, predating Christianity and the Roman conquest of the Dacian people living before the common era on what is now the territory of Romania. Ever since, folk crafts have captured related spiritual and popular beliefs in material forms, from embroidered clothing to decorative rugs, clay bowls, painted porches and carved wooden gates, infusing the sacred into the everyday. A central element in Romanian legends and folklore, the mythical tree is said to contain within its fruit or sap a miraculous elixir that can provide eternal life and youth. A symbol of the constantly regenerating, living Cosmos, the tree signifies the cyclic continuum of existence.

Hand-woven with wool and cotton on indigo-dyed warp using a standing loom built into a log wall of her house, Dragan’s rug reflects an ongoing attempt to learn and reconnect with ancestral practices, shaping a dialogue between her cultural heritage and her contemporary, diasporic reality. Applying physics and mathematics to conceive the tree of life as a rhizomatic network of relations based on the Fibonacci numeric sequence, Dragan’s pattern expands in all directions across potentially multiplying carpets, allowing for constant reassembling and expansion that may either follow the design or separate pieces into different groupings. Partly using coloured yarn and partly white cotton that she later over-dyes, Dragan relinquishes control, trusting and enabling elements of chance to determine the final outcome. Exploring optic tensions, RGB colours are woven in, while CMYK colours are mixed directly onto the woven rug like a poured painting. The logic of the work relies on a combination of predetermined structure and chaotic risk suggestive of the workings of life itself. Creating an enchanted object that connects past and present cosmologies, Dragan weaves the world anew, using the process of domesticizing as an act of connection and receptiveness."

--- Mona Filip, curator
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