Morus is an international silk network that proposes home-sericulture – meaning breeding of silkworms in a small scale in one’s home – to engage local communities in historical and future silk production. Members of the network document their parallel processes of sericulture in a collective diary, and work individually on multidisciplinary artistic investigations of the theme, in different locations in Europe.
The purpose of the project is to raise awareness of the relationships between silkworms, mulberry trees and humans, as well as to ask questions about these relationships from social, ecological, artistic and ethical perspectives.
The project was founded in Athens in 2022 by Kleopatra Tsali, Irini Gonou and Hanna Norrna. At this time, Irini was already breeding silk worms for several years in her home in Naxos. Hanna was making research about the history of silk production in Gotland where she grew up. Kleopatra’s studio, situated in the neighbourhood of Metaxourgeio (an area of historical silk factories) was the place for the artists first encounter.
The first chapter of the project was to bring bombyx mori eggs from Irini’s production to Gotland, to breed them on leaves from the old mulberry trees that was planted for the cause of sericulture in mid 1800s. The artists practiced parallell breeding in Athens, Naxos and Gotland, and worked individually on art works reflecting on the themes of metamorphose, moulting, silk mythology and ceremonies of change.
With support from the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, the artists worked towards an exhibition on Gotland in the summer of 2023. In mid July, one day before the opening of the first Morus exhibition at Galleri Apoteket in Roma, the eggs of the first butterflies on Gotland unexpectedly hatched. A group of people who had participated in the Gotland workshops took care of a couple of baby silkworms each to breed, and kept in contact during the process. This happening led the project in a direction of including more people – private persons, artists and researchers.
Hanna Norrna
Hanna Norrna is a textile artist based in Gothenburg, working with weaving as an intertwining of silent knowledge and spirituality, mythology and materiality. With the silkworm in a central position, her practice touches how craft, passion, vulnerability, body and sanctity are connected.
Hanna researches on historical silk production in Gothenburg, where she lives, and on Gotland, where she grew up and begun her education in crafts.
hannanorrna@gmail.com
Irini Gonou
I have heard from my father a lot of fragmented stories on my grandmother’s cocoon breeding in Peloponese in the beginning of the century when the cocoon breeding in Greece was a seasonal home business for many people. One day I decided to reconstruct these stories breeding silkworms by myself from a mulberry tree that accidentaly came as a seedling to sproute in my garden. Since then, I love beeing in this process every year meditate on the life circle and integrate its metaphors in my visual art work.
irinigonou@gmail.com
Kleopatra Tsali
https://www.kleopatratsali.com/
Kleopatra Tsali’s art practice explores the process of wandering, issues of habitation, and nomadism, in an attempt to redefine the sense of belonging, the relationship with the environment and identity. Her fabric cocoons, human-sized, resemble a lighter version of architecture. Clothing no longer has the conventional purpose of an everyday outfit and becomes the minimum structure. Clothing becomes the minimum home.
kleopatra.tsali@gmail.com
Morus project 