Nomadic Fabric Chadors

Nomadic Fabric Chadors is about the communication between the art of nomads and the State; it explores the possibilities of recreating chador as an anomalous diffusion between nomad colors, fabrics and sewing patterns on the one hand and the geometric shape, fabric and color codes administrated by the State on the other. In this project, actual chadors are made by using different sewing techniques (as related to nomads and the state), colors and multiple kinds of fabrics for each chador.

Nomadic Fabric Chadors are 350 cm wide x 190 cm long, the approximate size of a wearable traditional chador [see chador]. Structured in the nine-sum pattern of Abjad-9 [see Abjad-9], each chador contains nine panels covered by different types of nomadic fabric.

Three panels are always black, filled by conventional black fabric used for making chadors conforming to the State's religious code of dressing and ideological preference. The other panels are filled with different types and colors of nomadic fabrics. Therefore, the nomadic panels not only make diversity and heterogeneous conjunctions with each other but also form structural oppositions with the panels made of black chador fabric. Differences or compatibilities between the patterns, textures, weight, explicit folding lines, distribution of sequins and types of the fabrics release the potentials inherent to each fabric. These potentials emerge as islands of alliance or folds of opposition on every nomadic fabric chador. In addition, such incompatible diffusions and oppositions determine the overall textile architecture, folding potentialities and drapery dynamisms of the chadors; turning each chador into a socio-political meshwork of different nodes, proclivities, disjunctions, ambiguities, oppositions and insurgencies.

Since each chador has different sewing patterns and is made out of multiple types of fabrics; it is a peculiar folding monument which demonstrates its folding characteristics in regard to the negative space. Here nomadic chadors are more inclined towards imperfections rather than perfection. The nomadic way of garment making is constituted of primitive sewing techniques which together with the diversity of nomadic fabrics create unexpected individuations for each garment. For this reason, strings, fabric flaws, imperfections in seaming are all part of the nomad and its autogenous product. Once homogenous policies or ideologies belonging to the State pass through such structural but elemental imperfections, they develop into schisms. Influenced by the incompatibility between the inherent logics of the structure on the one hand and ideology or mode of politics imposed on it on the other, these schisms bring about new possibilities of creativity not anticipated by either the structure or its ideological image. Hence in this project, imperfection is seen as an asset rather than a flaw or lack. Here, imperfections are punctures to facilitate the emergence of the suppressed yet fundamental ambiguities, amphibian inclinations and profound diffusions.

While Nomadic Fabric Chadors relate to the state, as soon as the chador is put on by a woman, it takes on more characteristics and functions. Once woman and chador interact, the chador's elemental schisms to which established orders cannot be efficiently correlated begin to erupt, move and unfold in unexpected directions. Nomadic Fabric Chadors are explorations and experimentations in the movements and shifts which can happen while wearing such textile entities. Nomadic Fabric Chadors also studies the traces of the movements which are left behind by the unfolding of each chador in its surroundings. Nomadic Fabric Chadors demonstrate how the socio-political aspects of the Middle East can shift based on these new lines and heterogeneous trajectories -- the unforeseen dynamisms, antithetic conjunctions and autonomous schisms.

Another characteristic of Nomadic chadors is their sequins. Nomadic fabrics consist of clusters of sequins in different nomadic shapes and patterns which disturb the starkness and folding characteristics of the conventional black chador fabric. Yet at times these nomadic clusters form new surreptitious alliances with the black chador fabric. Sequins and Nomadic patterns on both sides of the nomadic fabric chadors operate as railroad switches; as soon as the movement reaches those switches it starts to shift in another direction. In Nomadic Fabric Chadors, sequins are drapery prisms; for when the fold goes through them, it refracts in unforeseen directions, creating seismic textile movements along the fold.

Characteristics of chador, its religious aspects and certain social codes attached to it are directly connected to the fabrics, colors and sewing patterns used for making this kind of veil. In regard to colors, fabrics and sewing codes, the State and the Nomads are genealogically different, yet not entirely separate. The traditional color of the public chador is black. Religiously prescribed by the State, chadors are made out of black crepe fabric (often imported), which is considered as the more 'high class' option in regard to the chador fabric. Yet traditionally, nomadic fabric is made domestically, considered primitive and garments created with nomadic fabric are made by hand. Nomadic colors represent certain tribes and their tribal banners or folklores connected to the nomad's constantly changing environment and medium of interaction. Ironically, one of the most preferred colors in nomadic fabrics is gold, which bespeaks of another clandestine connection between the State and the Nomad inherent to the middle-eastern drapery. The mining of gold and its use in coinage as an exchangeable metal are both connected to the history of the State and settled civilizations. The nomads were introduced to gold through contagious trades with the State-empires or through being semi-sedentarized by the States, or in other words, becoming nomads within the state and becoming part of the empire itself.

Chador is a production of socio-political as well as artistic communications between the nomads and the states in Islamic countries. Nomadic fabric is ambivalently revolutionary or perhaps implicitly rebellious; because its coloration, concentration of pores (netted fabric which exposes the object it covers) and patterns consistently undermine the State's fabrics by either explicitly dismantling their socio-political inclinations or anomalously fusing with them. Politically speaking, once nomadic fabrics move or are perceived collectively, they show their true color.

In 2008 nine Nomadic Fabric Chadors were shown at Azad Gallery in Tehran, Iran as part of a solo exhibition entitled nonad which also included 'Abjad-9' ink drawings and an animation entitled 'ninefold'. A review article entitled Unfolding the Middle East: Kristen Alvanson's Nonad written by Robin Mackay has been published in Umelec International contemporary art and culture magazine Issue 2/2008.