SHAHAR LIVNE
CONCEPTUAL MATERIAL DESIGNER

IN COLLABORATION WITH ROUA ALHALABI 
AND THE TEXTILE MUSEUM TILBURG
2022 - 2023

ALCHIMIA

Textile and leather dyers of the past fixed their dyes with animal products – urine, feces, blood, bone. This material practice drew on a concept from alchemy known as animalizing: the process of imbuing matter with “livingness” by adding organic, animal-derived components.

Alchimia is a series of tapestries that explore the entangled ecosystems of the natural world – animal, plant, mineral – and humanity’s impulse to categorize and divide the nature that surrounds us.

The tapestries are made from animal-derived blood, collagen and milk; minerals such as hematite and aluminum; and plant-derived components: oak apple, the roots and flowers of the Rubia tinctorum (madder). Through alchemical reactions, these materials generate a rich range of colors.

The work was inspired by age-old dyeing recipes  – Turkey red, oxblood-colored leather – and by the invention of milk protein fibers in the 1940s and 50s, developed as a solution to wartime scarcity of silk and wool.

The project was made possible by the Creative Industries of The Netherlands (Stimuleringfonds), and in collaboration with the Textile Museum Tilburg and dye specialist Roua Alhalabi. 
 

Size: height 160 cm x width 80 cm
Materials: hematite, aluminum, blood, madder root and flowers, milk yarn, collagen yarn, wool, bio cotton.