Toile de Jouy, an illustrated history -
This zine come with, before and after, an installation made of rolls of screen-printed fabric resting against the wall, similar to what you might find in a fabric shop. The base fabric for the prints is a 1950s printed 'Toile de Jouy' designed by Pascaline Villon for the now-dissolved textile empire Boussac. I found the fabric among my grandma’s old stock years after her small fabric/everything shop had closed down. The Toile de Jouy has often been said to be an ancestor to the comic, an early example of non-linear illustrated storytelling. Clusters depict scenes forming a tale you will want to cover your sofa with. Having considerably served as a vehicle for spreading and reinforcing a national identity, I used the fabric’s reverse side to print another tale, one that requires (continuously) more investigating. One that tries to unravel a French (/European) national identity built on colonial practices of theft, subjugation, and economic domination over much of the world, as well as its own working class.
ꕥ
28 pages
Run of 50 copies
Riso-printed by at LCBA, London, November 2023