The Trojan Family Tapestry by John Nava, in the new Ronald Tutor Campus Center
John Nava's Trojan Family Tapestry, which features several texts from the USC Libraries' holdings, is the subject of a recent article by John Seed in The Huffington Post. The tapestry hangs in the Steven and Kathryn Sample Hall in the new Ronald Tutor Campus Center. It will be formally unveiled tomorrow, September 30, during the building's Art Grand Opening.
Seed's article includes an interview with the artist and explains the history of the new tapestry:
Woven near Bruges, Belgium, using cotton, wool and silk fibers, the tapestry also features a rich ground that Nava calls a "mosaic of texts." Among the included texts -- all taken from USC Library holdings -- are a 13th century Koran, a Mayan codice, an 1807 Japanese manuscript on the life of fisherman, and a page from the Nuremberg Chronicles. All of those texts, and many others, float in a field of binary code. The wide range of historical and aesthetic sources quoted by the work create a kind of tension, something the artist fully intended.
Keep checking back to Libwire for more about the tapestry. A series of posts, Texts of the Trojan Family Tapestry, looks at some of the texts that Nava incorporated into his work.