Cassandra: Kima Guitart Exhibition at the Museum of Decorative Arts

To speak with my voice: the ultimate. I did not want anything more, anything different.

Cassandra, by Christa Wolf

On March 30, Spain’s National Museum of Decorative Arts in Madrid inaugurated the exhibition Cassandra, featuring the works of textile artist Kima Guitart. Cassandra is her vision of the myth of Cassandra, a symbol of unheard and invisible women, a mythical character from the Iliad, and protagonist of the novel by German novelist and essayist Christa Wolf. 

Kima Guitart fell in love with silk textiles in 1971 when she sought a way to support her painting. After studying traditional oriental painting techniques on silk, she was “trapped forever in its threads, so subtle and so strong at the same time.”. Like the protagonist of Christa Wolf’s novel Cassandra, Kima developed a language that allowed her to “speak with her voice.”. Seeking to restore the voice taken from Cassandra, she nourishes her interpretation of the novel from the third feminist wave in the 1970s.

Kima wanted to contemporize the art of silk in her creations. After developing her gestural language, she explored the technique in Paris and New York. She observed, interpreted, internalized, and transgressed it to make it her own. “I consider myself an artist, designer, and artisan. Heiress of an ancient and living tradition and the desire to incorporate the concept of beauty to everyday life.”

A finalist in 2012 for Spains’s prestigious Premio Nacional de Artesanía 2021 (National Crafts Award), her creations, which range from mural silks and clothing to large-scale textile sculptures and installations, have been in museum and gallery exhibitions in Europe, the United States, and China. Kima is a member of SACo, the association of contemporary artisans in Spain whose mission is to showcase creations by artisans and designers from Spain who work in various disciplines.

The exhibition runs until September 3.