Alayna Rasile Digrindakis & Lauren Roberta Korn: TEXTUS

TEXTUS explores ways in which text can be translated or made into visual artifact, visual art into literature, and how each medium speaks to record-keeping and storytelling.

In TEXTUS, poetry is brought into conversation with textile through the translation of written correspondence. By revisiting an archive of over four hundred letters sent between 2007 and 2016, Helena natives Alayna Rasile-Digrindakis and Lauren Roberta Korn allow one another to reinterpret their experiences by drafting a metaphorical palimpsest—one that layers poetic and visual explications of early adulthood. 

These women have utilized their seemingly disparate art forms to confront ideas of nostalgia and sentimentality, of hindsight and maturity, and to revisit their friendship through visual art and poetics. Ultimately, however, TEXTUS serves to emphasize the act and the intention of written correspondence. Beyond the content of the source material, it is the habit and the care with which individual stories were (and are) shared that embodies the ever-evolving relationship between text and textile, between writing and weaving. 

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website