Kurdish artist Roda Medhat is presenting a solo exhibition titled "From the Loom" at Toronto's Abbozzo Gallery, featuring large-scale sculptures and textile works that blend traditional West Asian weaving with digital fabrication and 3D scanning. The show includes luminous neon pieces in glass and acrylic that evoke Kurdish rug patterns, as well as textiles woven on an electronic Jacquard machine using imagery from Kurdish children's literature. A standout sculpture, "The Sheep and the Chevrolet" (2026), reinterprets a flawed 1947 ethnographic account by François Balsan, using 3D printing to place a whimsical sheep atop a Chevrolet as a playful critique of Western narratives.
The exhibition matters because it demonstrates how contemporary artists can use modern technology to preserve and reimagine cultural heritage, challenging colonial-era depictions and giving new life to traditional craft. Medhat's work highlights the ongoing relevance of Kurdish textile symbolism and the potential of digital tools to bridge historical narratives with contemporary art practice, offering a model for cultural preservation that is both innovative and critical.