On Friday, attendees at the opening of the “Eve’s Journey — Stepping on the Snake” exhibition traveled the world without ever leaving The ArtsCenter in Carrboro.
Naida Koraly picked up fiber art as a retirement hobby, but it grew into a 10-year project resulting in this exhibition, which consists of 38 handmade textile artworks. They depict fictional scenes based on women’s history spanning continents and centuries.
Koraly designed it as an immersive storyline following two sisters, starting with the biblical story of Eve and Lilith, and wrote an accompanying book titled “Stories, Stitches & Sisters.”
The book is a collection of letters between fictional sisters in the art pieces from "Eve's Journey." While the stories are fiction, they are based on historical facts from Koraly’s research into the various represented countries' cultures.
The works are placed along the gallery wall inside The ArtsCenter in chronological order. So as viewers walk down the hallway, they can see the tale of the sisters' stories play out, starting before 4000 BCE and ending in an imagined future after 2040 CE.
Koraly said that all too often, women’s history is erased and is presented in an unbalanced and one-dimensional way showing only women’s suffering.
Both the artwork and her accompanying book share stories of tragedy and triumph. The duality of life’s ups and downs are encapsulated in Koraly’s mantra “ah, life.” She said sometimes people say "ah, life" in a negative tone when bad things happen, but it can also be a positive sigh of relief when things are going well.
Koraly hides her mantra and signature somewhere in the stitches of each work. Sometimes she said even she cannot locate the hidden words between the multitude of layers and colors. She used over 600 different fabrics throughout the whole project.
