One did not expect to find Paul Klee in Afghanistan. And yet these 298 x 194 cm (9'9" × 6'4") woven by hand in the north-west of the country resemble an abstract canvas, blocks of colour that overlap and dissolve into one another, pearl grey, solar yellow, water green, burnt orange, in a composition that holds its own against the great modernist works of the last century.
It is this paradox that makes the piece so fascinating. An Afghan wool spun and woven according to ancestral gestures, for a result that speaks the language of contemporary art. Two worlds within a single rug, and between them, that living, irregular material that nothing industrial will ever be able to reproduce.
