Berman Museum of Art (2021)
MAPPING CLIMATE CHANGE:
The Knitting Map and The Tempestry Project
Berman Museum of Art, Pennsylvania
June 11 – November 30, 2021
Mapping Climate Change: The Knitting Map and The Tempestry Project
Berman Museum of Art Jun – Nov 2021
Climate Justice / Tempestries: The Knitting Map at the Berman in 2021
The recent emergence of a Tempestry movement has allowed a distinctively different re-visiting of The Knitting Map at the Berman. Tempestries are produced by knitting or crocheting a single row in a specified colour representing the high temperature each day for a year. Collectively they comprise a (mostly US) nationwide movement to document global warming in textile form. These works capture micro weather changes, highlight broader climate issues and do so on the intimate level of hand textile works. In 2005 The Knitting Map knitted the weather in a large scale collaboration, not by looking at a thermometer, but through software that generated the colour of yarn from a weather station. The resultant textile documents clearly (for example) the rain and floods of that Autumn. The Knitting Map is perceived by some to have inspired The Tempestry Project. The exhibition at the Berman Museum of Art in 2021 juxtaposes selected Tempestries with their progenitor, creating a new context for The Knitting Map that positions the work at the vanguard of the intersection of art and climate activism.
The Knitting Map will be displayed in the Berman Museum’s Main Gallery. An accompanying exhibition essay will be written by Deborah Barkun, Creative Director of the Berman Museum.
This exhibition is generously supported by The Coby Foundation and Culture Ireland.