Klaas Rommelaere: Embroidered Escapism

Exhibition Basecamp at the Museum of Costume and Lace in Brussels, Belgium, shows a colourful, slightly eerie world of complex and diverse textile handcraft. It is a settlement consisting of three tents and flags made out of a frame and covered with a colourful sail from embroidery and crochetery.

Basecamp is a place that typifies a temporary shelter to regain strength before undertaking a major climb. For Belgian artist Klaas Rommelaere, Basecamp is a ten-month journey to recovery by physically building a base for the next phase in life.

“Last years I broke my heart, and my immediate response was to flee away to a place where I just could be alone, outside of society, outside of what is going on in the world,” the artist confesses. “I just wanted to be there and concentrate on my work and not be bothered. This was not possible in real life so I basically made the place where I wanted to go, live and work.”

“When I installed the Basecamp and went home after the opening, it felt I had some new energy to work with. I had been making the works for ten months with sad energy, and suddenly it was enough and it was a time for something new.”

“I always saw tents as something really personal,” he continues. “When I was a kid, I spent twelve years at the boy scout. We went camping in tents every Easter and summer holiday, sometimes even for almost three weeks at a time. My father also always had a camping shop, where he sold sleeping bags, backpacks and tents, so it is also an ode to that.”

Rommelaere works with his “tribe of senior ladies,” who meet in a retirement home every week and work on his pieces.

“There are a lot of people who helped me and I am the most thankful for that,” he says. “Otherwise it would have taken me two years to finish to finish the work.”

Rommelaere graduated a Master in Fashion Design at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts KASK, in Gent, Belgium, in 2012, and worked as an intern at Raf Simons in Antwerp, Belgium and Henrik Vibskov in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 2014, he was awarded with the first P.I.G. Foundation Prize, which is aimed to support an ‘outstanding creative talent.’ His fascination to embroidery, crocheting, knitting and knotting started in his years as a fashion student, but he began to develop the direction further in 2013.

“I am now addicted to handcraft. To me, it feels like a second nature to express myself. I think if you concentrate on one thing – like I do with handcraft – and really push it, make it your own and make it personal, you can find a voice of your own.” •

Klaas Rommelaere – Basecamp at the Museum of Costume and Lace in Brussels, Belgium, on 24 September 2015–3 January 2016.