Call for Artists: FORGETME(K)NOT
Deadline: 30.09.2023
Exhibition date: November 2023
Museo del Ricamo e del Tessile, IT

SCD Textile & Art Studio
is a non-profit cultural association based in Perugia, active in the field ofcontemporary fiber art that promotes international art projects, particularly in the Umbrianterritory, with the aim of bringing a wide and heterogeneous audience closer to the languages related to the textile medium in the context of contemporary visual arts, also investigating urgentissues of our time with a view to opening up new reflections and a pluralistic discussion on thethemes that society is called upon to face.

FORGETME(K)NOT
responds to this need, a collective exhibition scheduled for November thatwill be included in a calendar of art events dedicated to the denied rights of women - first andforemost the right to respect and life too often denied by violent men - that SCD Textile & Art Studio intends to promote throughout the month, extending not only the 'duration' of the singleday dedicated to the fight against violence against women, but also the theme to include theplurality of oppressions inflicted on women of any ethnicity and in any country in the world.

SFORGETME(K)NOT: A KNOT ON THE HANDKERCHIEF TO REMEMBER (DENIED) WOMEN'SRIGHTS
The handkerchief is a domestic and common object that holds a layering of meanings. If today weassociate the term with a disposable item that - moreover - is banal and environmentallyunfriendly, for a long time it was an accessory that was treated with care and attention in itsrealization and to which a plurality of messages were entrusted depending on its use. From thesimplest fabrics to the most refined ones, often embellished with figures and monograms,handkerchiefs have a long history intertwined with female hands - that transformed them intosmall embroidery masterpieces - and with the hearts of women - pledges of love or vehicles ofseduction in times when gestures and objects were dense with meanings. On the other hand, asthe last refuge of our tears, they also become the symbol of our fragility, of the pain that - like allother human emotions - inhabits our existence. Waved on the docks of ships that sailed theoceans towards another world, it was the last testimony of love that travelers and emigrants sawas they moved further and further away from the mainland, the last memory they carried withthem leaving a railway track often with uncertain destinations.

To this plurality of meanings that oscillate between opposite events, the dimension of memorymust be added. The knot on the handkerchief is in fact the symbol par excellence of the need toremember, a warning not to forget something important.

And so, the sense of this exhibition is entrusted to this small square of fabric that asks visitors tokeep their attention alive and vigilant. Each participating artist will work on a handkerchief -preferably one that already has its own story preserved among the fibers - fixing the memory of adiscrimination, a violence, of every single right denied to a woman or a group of women, in anycountry in the world, entrusting art with the burden of rescuing it from oblivion. Eachartwork/handkerchief must be authenticated by the artist and knotted (or knotable) in one of thecorners.

THE EXHIBITION
The exhibition will take shape through a CALL FOR PARTICIPATION open to adult artists residingor active in the countries of the European Union, launched by SCD Textile & Art Studio, which willselect the most deserving works. The FORGETME(K)NOT exhibition will be set up at the Museumof Embroidery and Textiles in Valtopina (PG) Italy, in November 2023.

The regulation can be downloaded below, from the website www.scdtextileandartstudio.wordpress.com or can be requested by email at scdtextileandartstudio@gmail.com.