ROY presents: Mychaelyn Michalec

Future Ruin

For centuries, rug design has been rooted in a person’s culture. The designs signify identity and shared history whether through pattern or portraiture. A lineage of these textiles has survived through history and can now be found in museum collections near and far. These ruins of civilizations have become symbols of enlightenment and repositories of lost knowledge. 

Ruin is defined both as the broken parts that remain and as a situation in which a person has lost everything. My rugs are about both. They are the ruins of narratives from this contemporary moment, speaking to the passage of time and serving as a reminder that life is fragile and fleeting.

This pandemic could be the end of the world, and it is also the end of the world as we know it. What remains from this time of isolation, social injustice, gender inequity, and death for future civilizations to find? Perhaps only the fragments of images and screenshots on a phone.