Woven Secrets Exhibition
September 2024
Since Romania’s accession to the European Union, the textile industry has experienced significant changes. Historically, large state-owned factories were central to Timișoara’s economy and community life, shaping entire neighbourhoods and livelihoods. However, with increased EU-wide competition, mass production has declined. Today, while the industry is less visible, it is far from obsolete. Smaller, more flexible manufacturing systems have emerged, deeply interconnected with sectors such as automotive, chemicals, and agriculture. Textiles are no longer limited to traditional apparel or home categories but are now integral to more complex products and export chains.
`Woven Secrets` traces the fragmentations and transformations of Timișoara’s textile industry, revealing the overlooked design behind the city’s economic and social evolution. Part of FABER’s ongoing Design Signals research programme, which investigates the design ecosystem of Timișoara, the exhibition commissioned the research report ‘Shifts in Global Textile Markets: Romania's Role in the Global Value Chain from 1962 to 2022’. It showcases Romanian designers—partly selected through an open call—who have collaborated with local experts, producers, and manufacturers to develop work that presents prompts for reimagining the future production in the city.
The projects in `Woven Secrets` go beyond observation, actively engaging with and restructuring the industrial and cultural landscape. Designers work with waste materials, explore new production methods, and form unexpected collaborations that challenge traditional profit-driven supply chains. Some projects function as design laboratories, demonstrating how design can bridge scales and connect disparate manufacturing systems, archives and communities. The works also emphasise the deep expertise of Romanian workers, and the significance of textile in Romanian culture. Incidental design is revealed in labour, relations and landscape, in as much as it is obvious in products, entrepreneurship and innovation.
`Woven Secrets` reframes the textile industry as a complex, interconnected sector reflecting broader economic trends in Romania, Europe, and global production systems. The exhibition underscores design’s power to disrupt conventional production models and presents bold, visionary approaches to making, producing, and collaborating.
