Jakezo is French duo Jean-Jacques Schmidt and Zoe Fontaine. They are ‘gentle activists’ who after creating their own works now rescue and reinvent stitched tapestries. Starting in the 1970s thinking ‘less is more,’ they have now reversed this ethos in their art into “More is not enough!” We end up with this strange universe, which can be described as whimsical, eccentric, kitsch, crazy, baroque, and above all irreverent… as you like!”

Firstly Where are you from?

We both come from the east of France. Jean-Jacques was born in 1958 and myself, Zoé, in 1956. We’re compulsive DIYers and collectors! 

What is your background in textiles?

We met at the School of Decorative Arts in Strasbourg where we studied in the tapestry workshop. We graduated from the school in 1980 with the Beaux-Arts National Diploma.We then started to exhibit our work until unavoidable material contingencies led us to working on the side, in jobs more or less related to creation. Jean-Jacques turned to window-dressing in fashion stores, also furnishing and decorating, and ended up as a landscape designer! I taught yoga and then became a midwife.
Yes, I can see you going: “Hum, hum… isn’t that a feminist profession?” Well yes, in a way… subliminally, David against Goliath (or the female version)!
Now we finally have more time to devote ourselves exclusively to our passion. 

What is it about textile as an art form that appeals to you? 

As children, we both saw our mothers and grandmothers sewing, embroidering, knitting for hours, with little or no creativity but a lot of patience and skill. Before starting at the Decorative Arts School, neither of us had decided on a speciality. When we discovered the tapestry workshop, we fell into a world apart… muted, shimmering, warm, strangely calm in the midst of the busy school… with huge weaving looms taking up all the space… skeins of matte wool, repetitive gestures… a total immersion in raw colour, from morn till night… 

We wanted to take up the challenge of using this ancient technique to reveal something new… we didn’t want to limit ourselves to decorative flat surfaces but rather aim for volume, focus on the material, wool, coloured or not, all kinds of thread… 

Jean-Jacques was caught up in the conceptual and I was trying to claim a feminist position in my relationship to textiles. Our creations were intended to be provocative in the staid milieu of Aubusson tapestry.
It was the end of the 1970s and conceptual art was taking up a lot of space. Our creations at the time were very “raw”, almost arid. Our motto was “LESS IS MORE”. But today, we are happily diving into another dimension… “MORE IS NOT ENOUGH!”, with a riot of patterns and colours, to the point of saturation! 

What techniques do you use? 

For tapestry creations, we no longer need the loom. All we need is something to remove tapestries from their frames and then a good pair of scissors to cut them to our liking, and some cotton thread and needles to assemble them by hand. We also use a simple sewing machine for long seams and to strengthen hand-made seams. We sometimes add small pieces of cheap jewellery, ribbons, buttons, small pieces of fur… for some compositions, we embroider patterns directly on the tapestry, either to add a detail or to hide one. 

How do you describe your work? 

You could see our work as a mere recycling of worn out textile materials, but we go further, we try to REVIVE them, to give them an unexpected OTHERNESS…
After the pleasure of recuperating and salvaging old tapestries, we fashion them, torture them, until they confess the exact opposite of what they initially showed: namely, idyllic representations of human activities or of a luxuriant, generous nature, an outdated, conventional imagery that we sweep aside to make room for the brutal and stupid realities of our present times. 

We then end up with this strange universe, which can be described as whimsical, eccentric, kitsch, crazy, baroque, and above all irreverent… as you like! 

You call yourselves thread activists. How are you activists? 

First clarification: we like to call ourselves GENTLE activists, for lack of a better word… but very involved in gentleness, of course!
At our level, being an “activist” means:
– diverting a medium belonging to the domestic private sphere of another time to turn it into a free, liberated contemporary medium. 

– taking a stand against the stereotypes of a time, not that long ago, when women were confined to domestic work and needlework.
– giving a voice to all those invisible, forgotten women, absorbed in their repetitive tasks… although we are well aware that they would be horrified to see what we have done to their work… first ripping the tapestries from their showy frames and then shamelessly cutting them up!
– taking a stand against sexism, religiosity, male chauvinism, hypocrisy, homophobia, superstitions, violence against women, against the planet… Sadly, there is no lack of topics!
There’s also the pleasure of being provocative, of settling accounts! 

How do you create a piece?

At the outset, we just have an irrepressible desire to PLAY, to compose, to decompose… with three possible starting points:
– either a distinctive, strong tapestry that we can set off against others, – or the pleasure of colour, trying to juxtapose tapestries with complementary or contrasting hues, 

– or the desire to stage a slogan, a social fact, a dream… 

First of all, for the centrepiece, we often choose a portrait of a woman, an animal, or a particularly ugly tapestry… with THE question: “But what are we going to do with this?”
From there, it looks like a big puzzle, itself made of several small puzzles mixed together. The more disparate, the better! 

The exciting challenge then lies in coming up with an image of which we know NOTHING at the beginning. After plenty of trial and error, 

hesitation and backtracking, against all odds, without warning, an image, a story, takes form before our eyes! Also bear in mind there are two of us involved in the process, with all the hassle, intense negotiations, bitter fights and stubborn sulks that this implies… of course, we each stick up for our own idea! 

And sometimes, nothing happens!… That’s the game! 

About the colours, you have to imagine that the tapestries, once taken apart, are stored in different piles around the house. For example, we have a “mountain landscapes” pile, a “painting reproduction” pile, a “cut flowers” pile, a “blue trend” pile, a greener “nature” pile, and so on. There’s a big “hunting scenes” pile! So the dominant hue of a tapestry or a fragment of tapestry can lead to a new, unpredictable assembly. 

Finally, the other possible starting point can be the desire to stage a slogan (feminist, green, etc.), a societal issue, a delirium… we then need to extract from the magma one or two or three pieces that go with the starting idea.
You need a good memory to store the image bank in mind! From time to time, we have to do a big unpacking and spread everything around the house, on the terrace, in the garden, to have everything in sight and in mind… 

Where do you work? 

First, in my head! And I think of them a lot in bed at night…
In fact, we have piles of tapestries scattered all over the house, even under the beds (perfect for the cat to nap on). Our initial office-studio quickly proved too small for all the piles of tapestries and the resulting works, which are generally large-scale and difficult to store around the house! 

How long does a bigger piece take? 

The simplest pieces, without too many successive additions, take about 

two weeks to finish. The most complex ones, about a month. Nothing to do with the endless time we used to spend on our early tapestries. 

What are you most proud of in your art career so far…? 

We are proud to have attracted and kept your attention so far… 

Do you have any advice for aspiring textile artists? 

We don’t have any advice for young people, but we are grateful to some of them for their advice and support on how to use the social networks… they know who they are!
We also thank the Emmaüs community, which rescues people but also old tapestries. 

Is there anything you would like to add? 

If, while reading this interview, you remember seeing an old, faded tapestry lying around, abandoned to its sad fate, then don’t hesitate – send it to us and we’ll take great pleasure in REVIVING it.
Just remove it from its framework – without hurting yourself –, carefully trim the edges and put it in an envelope. It’s soft, it’s pliant, it won’t break. 

P.S.: a few clarifications for the young generations who have not had the opportunity to practice the art of tapestry.
A tapestry is a large, loosely woven, heavy canvas with a colourful pattern printed on it. The seamstress (or seamster!) embroiders it in half cross-stitch, with mercerised or non-mercerised cotton thread, following the outlines as closely as possible. 

It’s a bit like filling in a colouring book, but with embroidery thread; the quality of the result therefore varies widely depending on each person’s dexterity.
In the post-war years, these anonymous textile paintings adorned the walls of modest homes. All little girls tried their hand at tapestry one day, with more or less enthusiasm and skill, without calling on their imagination or creativity… but with a lot of patience! 

The themes evolved from one generation to the next but were mostly inspired by popular art, now considered rather “corny”:  hunting scenes,  floral motifs on black background, portraits of animals, children (Poulbot street urchins, for example), women,  genre scenes of the domestic world in the 18th–century countryside, reproductions of famous paintings.  imitations of the Lurçat tapestry style, more recently, “stars”: a pope, a famous singer (Claude François, for example), Disney characters.  And lastly, supposedly alluring female nudes in widely differing styles…
Always with an ostentatious, even flamboyant frame, disproportionate to the subject. They usually ended up in attics or junk shops, or even in the trash!
Thank you to the Emmaüs communities that have allowed us to “rescue” a bit of the soul of these humble, little-represented social milieus.
When you try to look past their recurring tweeness, you can see a lot of pride and tenderness in these quaint, sentimental tapestries.

https://www.instagram.com/jakezo_art/