In Europe of the Middle Ages, Lucca was the most important center for silk industry. Companies from Lucca, such as the Guinigi, were engaged in international commercial and banking activities, reaching as far as the Orient and Northern Europe. They nanced the Crowns of England, France and Burgundy. Upon the death of the Duke of Burgundy, a merchant from Lucca was appointed for the funeral from Hal to Dijon and along the entire route of the funeral procession, churches were decorated with black drapes carrying golden braiding from Lucca. With her presentation at Pavillon, located in direct neighborhood of the Guinigi (one of the largest corporations of the past), Judith Raum*, through the lens of the textile industry in Lucca, looks at the early development of the rst economic structures from which capitalism originated.
Silk and textile industry in general were the most important elds of production. At the time, commercial and nancial activities of global scale were linked to local structures of production and politics based on the exploitation of both subordinate and artisan labour. However, it was not in Lucca but in Florence that in 1378 the rst revolt of textile workers took place. In the Revolt of the Ciompi (from the word ciompo or beggar) the workers of the wool industry claimed their right to associate in unions, demanding true political representation and cancellation of debts.
The workers from Lucca would revolt two centuries later, around the May 1th 1531. When the ruling classes unloaded the costs of a nancial crisis on the workers and their families, the workers stood up under the banner of a tattered black fabric – again a fabric. The Revolt of the Ciompi stems from this historical incident. Among the demands of the Ciompi was the abolition of the controller, or checker – which can be associated with the ordered structure of a checkerboard grid. For the title of her show, Judith Raum reduced disestablish the checker to disestablish. In her earlier works, the artist has explored the relationship between Germany and Turkey in the nineteenth century and the German nancial imperialism linked to the construction of the Ottoman Railway, used as a bridgehead for economic and business development. For example, German textile products were sold in Anatolia as local products. The railroad was the instrument used to colonialize space and minds (among other material and immaterial tools such as the work organization, the strive for pro t, functionality, e ciency, etc.). It created the framework for a molding of the local landscape and its inhabitants into the new global economic outlook.
In her first solo show in Italy, Judith Raum shows large, white, silkscreen-printed fabrics as well as paintings with depictions of ghts between animals, taken from sumptuous silks of fourteenth century Lucca. Con icts, hunting scenes, predators and prey, dominated and subjugated. Presented in combination with works on paper, research material, texts and writings by Niccolò Rodolico on the Revolt of the Ciompi, the fabrics become precusors of modern political banners.
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until July 5, 2012
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Courtesy of Pavillon, Lucca
