*Passion 54* (Beautiful text by Chana Corinne Devor )

 

Straight out of a women and sisterhood story, Orly’s carpet (that she named Passion 54) speaks about the greatest secret of all times. “It is only with heart that one can see rightly” If this all started as a healing project, at age 54, Orly decided to make her heart whole again. Art is just like love, it requires vision and persistence, and the symbol of this carpet speaks about the power to create something beautiful through patient trials and errors. And this is what Orly, an Israeli artist living now in Auroville, specialised in recycled art decided to do: she went to thrift stores in Southern India to collect old, worn saris, tore them into long threads and with passion reassembled them and recycled them into a beautiful art piece… a carpet made of 54 circles. But it is more than a carpet and saris that you are looking at. It is about the stories and life of hundreds of Indian women. Some saris were immaculate, some stained with blood, food and sweat, some brand new, looking like royalty. The most touching one according to Orly was a very thin one, sawn into two pieces and so thin that it look like it was worn for one hundred years. Each art piece has a story , especially in recycled art , and in this healing project, it seems that if the body dies, our story does not, and if the heart breaks we can rebuild it again. Looking at those 54 round circles, close your eyes for one minute, get on Orly’s magical carpet and fly to the land of 1001 tales of beautiful Indian women and their colourful, heartfelt, floating saris.