Kari Dyrdal, NO

Kari Dyrdal is a textile artist known for monumental tapestries that exhibit a dual mastery of thecultural 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 finetuned mechanized control of weaving—an intimacy emerges, a humanity that withstands and is heightened by the technological process.

Kari Dyrdal (b. 1952, Norway) serves as a professor in the Faculty of Art, Music, and Design at the University of Bergen. She holds a degree in Textile Art from Bergens Kunsthåndverksskole (1977) and completed her postgraduate studies at the Croydon College of Art and Technology in London (1978). Her work has been exhibited at the National Museum in Oslo, KODE in Bergen, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, among others.