Taking its theoretical cues from current memory studies’ engagement with materiality and material culture, this article addresses the nostalgic material world of contemporary textile art in postcommunist Romania. It argues that certain textile art pieces are conducive to various nostalgic renderings of longing for both historical, and mythical (or personal) times and spaces. Two types of art production organize the focus of this article: the first one consists of artistic mnemonic materializations in which the artists employ textiles as the main medium. The second one consists of the artists’ works where the “memory of cloth”—that occasions nostalgia—is enacted in other artistic media. Rendering nostalgia through and about textiles are not approached as separate cultural practices. The two types of artistic production are analyzed in tandem to suggest that there is an interconnectedness between the material and “immaterial” mnemonic threads conducive to nostalgia.
BuchczykM (2014) To weave or not to weave: Vernacular textiles and historical change in Romania. Textile12(3): 328–345.
12.
CrowleyD (1998) Stalinism and modernist craft in Poland. Journal of Design History11(1): 71–83.
13.
CsikszentmihlyiM (1993) Why we need things. In: LubarSDavid KingeryW (eds) History from Things: Essays on Material Culture. London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993, 20–29.
14.
DolanAHollowayS (2016) Emotional textiles: An introduction. Textile: Cloth and Culture14(2): 152–159.
15.
Drace-Fracis (2016) Locating remembrance: Regimes of time and cultures of autobiography in post-independence Romania. In: FortnaBC (ed.) Childhood in the Late Ottoman Empire and After. Leiden: Brill, 191–222.
16.
DyerS (2021) State of the field: Material culture. History196(370): 282–292.
GledhillJ (2011) Three days in Bucharest: Making sense of Romania’s transitional violence, 20 years on. Europe-Asia Studies63(9): 1639–1669.
19.
HarrisOJTSørensenTF (2010) Re-thinking emotion and material culture. Archaeological Dialogues17(2): 145–163.
20.
HeideggerM (1978) The Origin of The Work of Art. London: Routledge.
21.
HuntC (2014) Worn clothes and textiles as archives of memory. Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty5(2): 207–232.
22.
KaranaE (2010) How do materials obtain their meanings?METU Journal of the Faculty of Architecture27(2): 271–285.
23.
KennyM (2023) Back to the populist future? Understanding nostalgia in contemporary ideological discourse. Journal of Political Ideologies22(3): 256–273.
24.
KesslerE (2016) Sculptura in Miresme [Sculpture in fragrances]. Said and Sewn Exhibition Catalogue. Bucharest: Vellant.
LukovskaOKara-VasylievaT (2022) Mini textile art in Eastern Europe: Historical survey. Journal of Visual Art Practice21(1): 25–25.
29.
ManziniE (2016) Design culture and dialogic design. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Design32(1): 52–59.
30.
MarcheseRBreuM (2004) Sacred textiles: The hidden wonders of the Armenian Orthodox Church Collection of Istanbul. Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture7(2): 86–99.
31.
MullerA (2006) Notes toward a theory of nostalgia: Childhood and the evocation of the past in two European “heritage” films. New Literary History37(4): 14–23.
32.
NovakovichJ (2023) Paradise lost: Theology of nostalgia and hope. In: OdakSGozdanovZ (eds) Balkan Contextual Theology. London: Routledge, 23–45.
TodorovaMGilleZ (2010) Post-Communist Nostalgia. New York: Berghahn Books.
39.
TugearuL (1997) Experimentalism in Romanian Choreography of the 1960s though the 1990s, Experiment in Romanian Art since 1960, Bucharest: Soros Center for contemporary Art, 464–484.
40.
Von TilburgW (2023) Locating nostalgia among the emotions: A bridge from loss to love. Current Opinion in Psychology49(1): 1–7.
