Tammy Kanat: Vault, Issue 52

Culture and religions endure through stories. The longest continuing culture, the First Nations people of Australia, share Dreamtime stories of their ancestor spirits to make sense of who they are and the land on which they live. The Quran holds timeless stories to inspire the heart and nurture the soul. The Torah contains scriptures that guide the beliefs of the Jewish people. Families tell their own stories, like legends, of the grandfather who sacrificed everything or the heroic mother who endured extreme conditions in childbirth. These stories repeat over generations to shape identities and become reinterpreted and reinhabited in ritual, practice and also in art.

 

Textile weaver Tammy Kanat has embraced the stories of Jewish female archetypes to guide her recent body of work. Without conscious effort, the first archetype manifested through her textile work is Lilith (2024). From Kanat, each additional archetype emerged in an exploration of faith, meditation and feminine strength, as characteristics that endure to shape and guide human behaviour. In Jungian psychology, archetypes are not people but fundamental patterns of experience and emotion, universal across time and culture.