A fundamental need of humans is to record their stories. Whatever we deem important to preserve – memories, events, beliefs, everyday situations, personal stories, or even 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 is reiterated regardless of era or culture, making visible that works created in different periods and places are imprints of the same continuously recurring process. In this sense, a 1,700-year-old Inca rug and a contemporary work painted in 2025 come surprisingly close to one another.

The HAB Interwoven exhibition makes this continuously recurring gesture visible by bringing carpets from times long past into dialogue with contemporary paintings. 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.

The four sections of the exhibition explore this theme from different points of view. The Light Space on the ground floor traces the narrative arc of human life from birth to death. The entrance and the exit are linked to two gates, framing the beginning and end of human life. Between the two, the space of human relationships unfolds: alternating states of harmony and conflict, cooperation and hostility. This space explores how the course of life is shaped by the relationships into which we are born and to which we must relate again and again.

On the upper floor, two additional sections further develop this train of thought. The first focuses on materiality. In the works here, matter is an active participant, a medium of meaning: it records the artist’s momentary mood, the passage of time, and the traces of human touch, conveying tactile sensations. The second explores the world of patterns: here, contemporary works are placed alongside the carpets, whose dense construction, layering, and rhythm, as well as geometric forms and structures, where applicable, are reminiscent of woven surfaces. These doubles demonstrate that certain visual modes of thinking – whether organic or abstract – return across cultures and eras, bridging and connecting the past and the present again and again.

The Cabin space explores the relation of chaos and order through the divergent logic of carpets and paintings. The surface of traditional carpets is often composed of many small motifs: viewed individually, they appear fragmented, almost chaotic; together, they are rendered into a comprehensive, regular structure. On the carpet, the cosmos is a compound of many small, independent elements that ultimately produce an order. In the paintings presented here, on the other hand, the fragmented forms, overlapping shapes, and visual fractures do not lead to an ultimate structure. Here, chaos is not a transitional state but an enduring experience: a worldview in which disorder does not resolve itself.

The exhibition brings together works by artists of Oriental, African, and Hungarian origin in a shared space that fosters a dialogue between diverse cultural experiences and visual modes of thinking. The cultural and visual traditions of the carpet – and, more broadly, of textile art – are tightly linked to the Arabic and African worlds, where these practices historically served not merely utilitarian functions but operated as systems that carried knowledge, memory, and significance. The exhibition treats this heritage as a living reference: a foundation on which contemporary artistic positions, new narratives, and connections are based.

Interwoven thus consciously connects to those international discourses that call for a rethinking of Eurocentric art historical narratives and interpret artistic positions from the Arabic and African world not as peripheral or exotic phenomena but as major cultural sources in their own right. 

Curator: Katica Kocsis

Exhibiting artists:

BERNÁTH András · Again Isheanopa CHOKUWAMBA · CSATÓ József · GÁSPÁR Annamária · Shahla HABIBI ·Joseph William KACHINJIKA · KANICS Dorottya · KIS Endre · KOLESZÁR Kata · KOLTAI Barbara · Diki LUCKERSON · NAGY Kriszta Tereskova · Frank NKOSIYABO · RÁKÓCZY Gizella · SINKOVICS Ede · Patrick TAGOE-TURKSON · Hyacinthe OUATTARA · UJHÁZI Péter

Place of origin of the carpets:

Belgium (Flanders), Finland, Iran (Persia), Congo, Russia (Caucasus), Peru, Tajikistan, Türkiye (Anatolia), Tibet, Uzbekistan

Special thanks to: Ludman Lajos, Kacsuk Péter, Tóth Simon Ferenc, 193 Gallery Paris