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Nadie Borggreve’s (1991) tapestries stem from a profound longing for nature. They feature leaves, floral motifs, a lake reflecting a starry night sky. Yet her inspiration comes not from the forest, but from city walks. She is particularly drawn to the contrast between nature and the built environment: a bright pink rose peeking through from grey paving stones, a sea of wildflowers in a meticulously manicured garden.
This interplay between the natural and artificial is echoed in Borggreve’s choice of materials and colours. She crafts her tapestries from recycled wool and considers it essential to work with natural materials. At the same time, she hand-dyes the wool in intensely saturated colours, subtly tricking us and giving the material an almost synthetic appearance. Her tapestries are often shaped like gothic windows, with the colourful wool reminiscent of stained glass.
Craftsmanship plays an important role in the artistic practice of Borggreve, who has a background in fashion. She employs various techniques, such as tufting and intarsia – a method of knitting with multiple colours. Over the past year, she collaborated with dye specialist Loret Karman to develop techniques for achieving maximum colour intensity in her wool. Borggreve also developed a tailor-made method for creating the gobstopper-like gradients that feature in many of her works. For her new tapestry for Prospects, she combined tufted wool with a background of oil pastels and airbrush on paper. The cut-outs provide depth, causing the illusion of gazing through a stained window.
Text: Sarah van Binsbergen
Translated from Dutch by Marie Louise Schoondergang (The Art of Translation)