KARI DYRDAL

Kari Dyrdal (Norwegian, b. 1952) is a textile artist, known for monumental tapestries that exhibit a dual mastery of the cultural tradition of hand weaving alongside an intricately researched digital production. Dyrdal’s practice involves a deep investigation of memory, incorporating pattern, repetition and structure as expressions of her ideas on aesthetics and cultural heritage. Working from her personal photography, Dyrdal considers the use of recognizable images as essential to her technique; expanding the potential of textile to communicate, she transforms her photography within the digital loom to create a juxtaposition between pictorial representation and abstraction.  Dyrdal's textile works approach grand, architectural scale, and through her meticulous and premeditated digital process and aesthetic - the tightly packed pixels and fine-tuned mechanized control of weaving -  an intimacy emerges, a humanity that withstands and is heightened by the technological process.
Drydal serves as a professor in the Faculty of Art, Music and Design at the University of Bergen. She holds degree in Textile Art from Bergens Kunsthåndverksskole in 1977, and completed post graduate study at the Croydon College of Art and Technology in London in 1978. Her work has been exhibited at the National Museum, Oslo, the KODE/Vestlandske Kunstindustrimuseum, Bergen, and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, among others.