A fundamental need of humans is to record their stories. Whatever we deem important to preserve – memories, beliefs, personal stories, or shared experiences spanning generations – we repeatedly organize into a visible form so that it can be passed on. Paintings and carpets are among the surfaces that carry meaning: into them, individual destinies are inscribed just as much as humanity’s collective knowledge. This practice repeats itself regardless of era or culture, allowing for a meaningful connection to emerge between a 1,700-year-old Inca rug and a contemporary painting from 2025 in this sense.

Interwoven makes this continuously recurring gesture visible: the HAB exhibition brings together works by artists of Oriental, African, and Hungarian origin, elevating antque carpets and contemporary paintings into a shared space that fosters a dialogue between diverse cultural experiences and visual modes of thinking. The dialogues created in space build bridges between time planes and cultures: the past and the present do not appear as separate entities but rather interpret one another, intertwined. In the patterns, materials, and recurring motifs of the carpets, the collective knowledge of a community or culture condenses, while the contemporary works provide new languages and new answers to questions raised in the past. The aim of the exhibition is to reveal connections: to explore how certain stories, forms, and thoughts appear and continue to live on in carpets and paintings, in traditional artisanship and in contemporary artistic reflection.

Curator: Katica Kocsis