NABIYA initiated a collaboration with the Musée des Tissus & les arts décoratifs of Lyon, France, renowned for their world’s most extensive collection spanning 4,500 years of history, which led to the opportunity to present a dematerialised exhibition “être Soie”.
The exhibition title is a clever wordplay on the French homophone “soie”. It is an invitation “to be oneself” and/or “to be silk.”
The idea of the collaboration was a natural choice for NABIYA, since the studio is rooted in Lyon, known as the silk capital of the world, where some of the world’s most luxurious silks have been produced for centuries.
The curation is designed for an online gamified experience, focusing on three themes:
- Sericulture (the art of silk making) and the silk roads
- Jacquard weaving loom (tools)
- Fashion and the emblematic historical costumes of the Musée des Tissus
The experience set in The Sandbox metaverse is an invitation to explore the art of silk-making and view images of priceless fashion pieces (Joséphine de Beauharnais’s silk dress, Christian Lacroix, Mariano Fortuny…) from the 14th century to the present day.
The Sandbox is gearing up to honour the expertise of French studios operating within the open metaverse. The platform is launching a live event “French Weeks”.
As part of the festivities, NABIYA launch in its virtual space Maison NABI Haetera, the innovative “être soiE” gamified exhibition in collaboration with Musée des Tissus.
The exhibition is available online for free until the 30th of mai.
A physical museum is tapping into the metaverse through Maison Nabi: Learn about the use-case
The physical Musée des Tissus, with a collection of over two million historical remarkable pieces, will celebrate its 160th anniversary next year, while its sister Musée des Arts Décoratifs will reach its 100th anniversary in 2025. The merged museums are nested in the heart of Lyon, in two private mansions, jewels of eighteenth-century architecture.
The collection offers an exceptional testimony to the textile heritage of humanity, it tells the story of textile production, embracing the know-how and production of all continents. The museum naturally has always been a great resource for researchers worldwide.
Le Musée des tissus is closed since 2020 as it conducts ambitious renovation work.
While being away from the public eye, two of the museum’s challenges are:
- How to continuously showcase the richness of the collection (textiles, decorative arts, fashion, art) while being closed.
- How to renew the attractiveness toward a younger visitor’s profile, and to a larger public, beyond the experts and researchers.
NABIYA studio is delighted to curate the Musée des Tissus collection into a virtual exhibition, testing more dynamic and playful experiences on new platforms with which Generation Z is more familiar.
By creating this virtual experience, NABIYA is not only providing a solution to the challenges of the renovation of the Musée des Tissus but also paving the way for a new era of art appreciation and accessibility.
Connecting historical pieces to contemporary artists
To complete the exhibition, NABIYA is delighted to present a contemporary artist, Nadia-Anne Ricketts, also known as BeatWoven, whose work, since 2008, transmutes sound frequency into decorative textile art.
After meeting in Art Dubai, we were fascinated by her work ‘Portal 22.2.22’. A woven fabric design technique, invented by Nadia, that through her own bespoke software tools, captures in time and space composed sounds, rhythms, and melodies into their mesmerising patterned geometric shapes, which are consequently preserved with colour and coded silk threads upon a Jacquard loom’.
MUSEE DES TISSUS ET DES ARTS DECORATIFS
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