The World is a Handkerchief

“The World is a Handkerchief,” is an international collaborative project curated by Cecilia Mandrile and Claudia DeMonte that features a collection of handkerchiefs exploring notions of homeland, family, displacement, and identity. The project will be presented at Blackburn 20|20 Gallery, Elizabeth Foundations of the Arts, New York City, during November 11-18, 2020.

The concept of the project is rooted on the age-old Spanish idiom ‘el mundo es un pañuelo,’ or as we may say in English ‘what a small world.’ It praises serendipitous encounters, moments of discovering personal connections in distant places or unexpected contexts. Celebrating such interconnectedness, and willing to nurture the disappearing tradition of the printed handkerchief, Cecilia Mandrile and Claudia DeMonte invited their mentors, students, and peer artists to share visual contemplations or personal stories on the various notions of homeland. They created a limited edition of 25 handkerchiefs each, asking each invited artist to produce their own handkerchief, and offered their creations in exchange.


Handkerchiefs—the foldable, portable, simple squares of cotton—have accompanied people in celebrations and farewells in many cultures for centuries, offered bodily protection and coverage, and sustained expressions of political tenets and spiritual beliefs. In “The World is a Handkerchief,” handkerchiefs become vessels of memories and itinerant narratives; containers of emotions; translators of wounds, signals of ideological resistance. Each piece epitomises a soft space for visual statements, to be carried as a tangible memento. Artists employed printmaking, painting, embroidery, drawing, cyanotype and collage to capture their wandering, often disappearing recollections of homeland as well as reflections on displacement and identity.

Participating artists: Victoria Arce, Guler Ates, Dotty Attie, Yuno Baswir, Sarah Bodman, Stephanie Brody Lederman, Joy Brown, Alicia Candiani, Matt Clay-Robison, Chiachio & Giannone, Tariq Dajani, Claudia DeMonte, Mariana Depetris, David Driskell, Eiman Elgibreen, Judy Glantzman, Joy Gregory, Hiroyuki Hamada, Sarah Hinckley, Maia Horta, Barbara Johnson, Laura Sue King, Katerina Kyselica, Luis Libretti, Eva Lundsager, Cecilia Mandrile, Ed McGowin, Jeannette Montgomery Barron, Keith Morrison, Erica Naito, Eduardo Padilha, Carinna & Grace Parraman, Alicia Paz, Jefferson Pinder, Alice Pixley Young, Boyo Quintana, Rocca Family, Alex Rojas, Graciela Sacco, Soffía Sæmundsdóttir, Claudia Sbrissa, Berty Skuber, Marisa Tellería, Claudia Terstappen, Betty Tompkins, Sofia Torres Kosiba, Lucrecia Urbano, Kay WalkingStick, Katarina Wong, Aaron Yassin, Rossana Zaera, and Firooz Zahedi.

Alongside the exchange collaborative exhibition and driven by the collaborative and nomadic nature of Mandrile and DeMonte’s art practice, community-based print workshops have been developed. The presented chapter of this wandering genealogy includes the outcome of the workshops at Zona Imaginaria Graphic Studios (Buenos Aires, Argentina) and the Centre for Fine Print Research, MA Multidisciplinary Printmaking Programme (Bristol, UK). Artists participating in workshops collections include: Sofía Benavides, Carmela Braconi, Matías de la Guerra, Lucila Guerrero, Mónica Girón, Sonia Filadoro, Liana Lestard, Lulú Lobo, Milagros Mansilla, Antonio Panno, Lara Gimenez , Micaela Romero, Mailen Rivero, Camila Smart, María Villanueva, Theadora Ballantyne-Way, Ru Broadway, Prerna Chandiramani, Maria Galvez, Jennifer Gathercole, Ros Jarman, Josie Martin, Olivia Pratt , Alyn Smith, Zelda Velika , Verity Winslow, Jo Barnfield, Aoife Barrett, Leonie Bradley, Emma Brown, Angie Butler, Niamh Fahy, Lizzie Field, Kate Fraser, Ben Jenner, Jennifer Lewis, Emily Lucas, Robert Francis Martin, Laura Morgan and Gin Saunders.

A limited edition catalogue with a foreword by Gill Saunders, Senior Curator of Prints at the Victoria & Albert Museum was published by Impact Press, Bristol, UK in October 2019. The catalogue will be available to purchase at the gallery during the exhibition. The curators will be signing books at the gallery on the opening day, November 11th, 4-6 pm.

If you are interested in receiving further information about “The World is a Handkerchief,” or RSVP a private tour with curators please contact Cecilia Mandrile at ceciliamandrile@gmail.com or Claudia DeMonte at claudiademonte@gmail.com

Follow the project in Instagram: @theworldisahandkerchief