Press and media

For thirty years, Katherine Roumanoff has lived and worked on the banks of the Loire, near Angers. A multidisciplinary artist — by turns designer, illustrator and author — she draws on her deep love of fabric to compose figures in search of reconciliation.

Katherine, to have material to create with, you collect fabrics from all over the world. How was this passion for textiles born?

I carry a deep, long-standing love for fabric. In the 1970s, my parents imported oriental clothing and decorative objects; I wore embroidered quilted vests, and played hopscotch on Afghan rugs. I am fascinated by patterns, by arabesques that echo plant forms. Symmetry sometimes, repetition always, the solids, the voids, the fine lines. Materials can give back extraordinary colours. Fabric also speaks of human beings, of know-how, of cultures, of transmission, of intentions, of wealth, of a display of opulence or restraint. Textile is a language. From birth to shroud, it envelops us, protects us, accompanies us.

You gave up your paintbrushes thirty years ago — can fabric express everything?

As a designer, I drew textile patterns, but it all began when I created theatre costumes. I linked colours, materials and patterns to the characters' personalities. The costumes served as set and message, also conveying the director's intentions. From that experience I kept the idea of a figure whose personality is revealed through the choice of materials, colours and patterns. I had built my textile palette from upholstery fabric houses such as Edmond Petit, Manuel Canovas, Boussac, Rubelli, Pierre Frey. Impossible to throw away the offcuts of these true marvels: it's with them that I began creating textile portraits.

I cut directly into the material, like Matisse with his cut-outs, with no preliminary drawing. And I assemble. What's practical with collage, of course, is that you can try many things before finding a composition.

A simple piece of fabric carries a multitude of information. Velvet reflects colour differently depending on its orientation, unlike a weave that absorbs light. Fabrics also carry the era in which they were invented: a toile de Jouy transports us to the boudoir of a château, small geometric, repetitive patterns take us to a more recent era. The juxtaposition of shapes cut in small pieces or large masses, the mixing of patterns, colours arranged in tonal ranges or in tension, offer infinite possibilities — I question the material and its codes and complete it with touches of paint.

You are a hypnotherapist. Does your hypnosis practice influence your work?

Yes, on several levels. When I create, I am probably close to a trance state: I have the sensation of letting myself be guided by the materials, the patterns, the colours.

Hypnosis has also let me deepen my understanding of the mechanisms of the unconscious, of buried memories, of transgenerational wounds. The face reveals what cannot be said, what is hidden. It speaks, in spite of us, of fears, desires and invisible forces that run through us and shape us. It says more than we are conscious of. What interests me is inscribing on the canvas the dense, fleeting instant when the soul escapes.

On the personal-therapy side, my approach resembles an attempt at reunification. I take all sorts of scattered materials and turn them into a harmonious whole. It's a kind of spiritual quest: taking the scattered into account and creating a composition that gathers and traces a path, a thought, an invitation to an inner journey.

Your Oppressed Women series blends concept, narrative and emotion?

Indeed — I created three-dimensional textile figures which I placed inside transparent pouches before crushing them until they "bled". It is symbolic of the oppressions inflicted on women everywhere in the world. When I remove the air, as for preserving meat, I witness a violent, inexorable metamorphosis. The faces wither, wrinkle, freeze under the plastic film. I then free some of them to offer them a form of resilience. I pin them like butterflies before framing them. The process becomes as interesting as the result. These oppressed, then pinned, women are at once decorative and conceptual.

How does the public receive this new concept?

With a great deal of emotion. This collection of oppressed women leaves no one indifferent. I showed it for the first time at an exhibition last summer. Women cried, some recognised themselves and confided their own stories to me. I had prepared texts to present my approach, but the works speak for themselves. We carry the traces of our past, of what has gripped us, but also of our hopes. This series is a continuation of my work, because I have never wanted to say anything else.

The question that arises is what comes next: how do we live with visible or invisible wounds? Can we heal from a trauma, repair ourselves, stitch our wounds back together and move forward? My figures stand at a crossroads. Will they sink, rebuild, or even rise from their ashes? I'm calling on the strength each of us can reach within.

Does the psychological dimension take up all the space in your singular research?

The psychological dimension lies in my deepest nature. By staging figures alone, in relation to nature, to themselves, or in pairs, I am interested in the relationship we hold with ourselves, in our inner dialogues, in our hesitations of the heart. I seek to reveal, to uncover the mystery of how we function. The bird, for instance — in my bird series — represents the emergence of an idea coming from within, like a revelation, or from outside, like a new proposal that will spark upheaval. It's a message: everything is at play at all times, so anything is possible.

Ultimately, my work is a search, and this search is a journey — the one each of us takes over a lifetime to draw closer and closer to ourselves.

I hope my works give off a certain beauty — that of harmony, of calm, of serenity — as well as a poetry, that of the pleasure of existing in openness to the world. That is what I wish for everyone: that each person slips inside themselves and accepts their own multitude, their infinite inner richness, and that this acceptance opens every door.