Of Palimpsests & Erasure

In 2021, the TextielMuseum asked Patricia Kaersenhout to develop a new work for the collection. She returned to the lab a year later to make a series commissioned by the Centraal Museum Utrecht for the exhibition The botanical revolution. Called ‘Of Palimpsests & Erasure’, the series is a critical response to the work of naturalist Maria Sybilla Merian. For her botanical drawings from Suriname, Merian used the knowledge of indigenous and enslaved women but never acknowledged them. A palimpsest is a parchment on which texts were written in the Middle Ages. Because palimpsests were so costly, they were chemically cleaned and reused, but the earlier texts reappeared over time. Kaersenhout used this as a metaphor to ‘disrupt’ Merian’s work with women who emerge from the past to claim their place in history. The resulting tapestry measures 350 x 520 cm and comprises different materials, including reflective yarns to create a localised lenticular (animated) effect