The organizers of the 18th Carpathian Basin Folk Textile Festival and Exhibition – Békés County Folk Arts Association (Békéscsaba), Heritage House (Budapest) and the Association of Hungarian Folk Artists (Budapest) – were more than pleased to welcome Professor Dusen Kasseinov, the Secretary General of the International Organization of Turkic Culture (TÜRKSOY) as an honored guest to the event which was a true celebration of folk textile traditions and living folk arts.
Some of the talented speakers had been identified through the Association of Hungarian Folk Artists (AHFA), but the Festival has also partnered with the Organization of Turkic States, TÜRKSOY and the Korean Cultural Center in Budapest.
The Conference of 2022 continued to extend its horizons, including textile traditions and their preservation efforts from the countries of the East. The invited speakers came from Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Bulgaria and even South Korea, as well as from a wide variety of professions – ethnographers, researchers, university professors. What they all had in common was the goal to explore and preserve for the future the folk textile traditions of the countries involved. The speakers introduced the audience to Bulgarian, Turkish, Azerbaijani, Kazakh and Kyrgyz textile traditions, and underlined that these traditions can only stay alive if they are returned to the mainstream, and included in contemporary items and fashion as well.
The Conference of 2022 chose „Holiday Preparations” as a title for the creative tender, accepting folk textiles of festive occasions. Most of the items were embroideries, along with a significant number of folk attire pieces, showcasing both original, traditional folk costumes, as well as modern renditions of folk motives in contemporary clothes. The conference included a wide range of presentations, ranging from the traditional textiles and symbols of yurts to virtual 3D planning methods for hemp fabric products. Similarly, the Exhibition also put the spotlight on both traditional, and tradition-inspired contemporary clothes and textiles.
In addition to the presentations, a Korean evening was also included in the program of the Conference in which the culture, dances, music and gastronomy of South Korea were introduced.
