Artist Gözde Ilkin is one of the selected artists for the Lyon Biennale 2024, Les Voies du Fleuves / Crossing Water.

> Call for testimonials:

As part of the next Lyon Biennial, which opens in September 2024, Gözde Ilkin is creating the installation Majority of Accent, which will be presented in one of the spaces of the former factory. Her aim is to weave the memory of the place with your stories, embroidering them onto fabric forms, and calling on the workers of the SNCF technicenter at La Mulatière to bear witness.

“Entitled Majority of Accent, the main fabric of this installation is made up of a rock pattern. Stones are the elements that preserve the shape and memory of the earth, shaped and moved with all living and non-living things. Each stone is unique in color, texture and form, and bears the traces of its past. At Grandes Locos, these are the stones that form the bases of the railroad tracks. To these rocks, I add embroidered figures and wild plants inspired by the place.

I’d like to complete this work of collecting testimonies through a workshop with local residents and former employees of the technicenter. The shapes I create from different fabrics can be embroidered by the participants. Inspired by Lyon’s railway line, the migration of land and the stories of the SNCF factory, we’ll embroider motifs during the workshops that will make Majority of Accent an archival textile work.” — Gözde Ilkin