Chrysalis is a collaborative project by Nathalie Rey and Eda Emirdağ that began during Rey’s residency at Montag, in Gönen (Balıkesir, Turkey). Rooted in encounters with women from the village of Ekşidere and local craft associations, the project explores healing, memory, and resilience through collective gestures and textile creation.
Its first public action took place in the café of Ekşidere — a male-dominated space temporarily reclaimed by women — where participants were invited to part with symbolic objects tied to their family wounds. From this ritual emerged a series of wool-based works that revisit archetypal female “uniforms”: a wedding dress, a straitjacket, and a maid’s apron, all handmade by local artisans. Exhibited in 2025 at the Cardedeu Museum (Barcelona) and the Gönen Museum (Balıkesir), these pieces reveal how traditional know-how can become a language of emancipation.
Through fieldwork, video, and performance, Chrysalis also reexamines wool production as a model of circular economy — making visible the invisible processes of labor and material transformation. The project envisions new forms of community grounded in care, reciprocity, and resistance to neoliberal isolation.
Photos by Eda Emirdağ
Meeting of women from Ekşidere and Gönen on the occasion of the event Lifting the veil at the café in Ekşidere, September 2024
Photos of the exhibition The Bride, the Maid and the Madwoman – Part 1: The Bride at the Chapel of Sant Corneli, Tomàs Balvey Archive Museum, Barcelona. Curated by Mercè Alsina and Enric Maurí
Exhibition Local Dialogues 2.0 at the Museum of Gönen, Turkey, August 2025
Filming and editing by Eda Emirdağ
MP4, 1920 x 1080 px, 5min, 2025
Project funded by the Generalitat (grant for artistic creation, research and innovation in the fields of visual arts)
With the support of Montag Residency, the Kadin Eli association, the municipality of Gönen, the Tomas Balvey Museum and Archive in Cardedeu and Secant Space
