In September 2022 I stood in line to put my sneakered foot into a machine that deftly wrapped it with clear crunchy plastic. Then I swapped to cover my other shoe with clear crunchy plastic. We were a group of tourists crunch, crunch, crunching on the white linoleum of Vila Tugendhat, one of modernist architecture’s impressive centrepieces.

In Nothing is certain, said The Curtain, padded velvet shapes and mobile curtains reimagine

the work of underappreciated modernist interior designer Lilly Reich. In 1929 Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich designed the Vila Tugendhat in Brno, Czech Republic. Against the backdrop of modernist architecture‘s implied certainty and stability, Lilly Reich’s curtains perform as agile provocateurs, disrupting fixed boundaries, suggesting adaptability and ephemerality. As erotic elements, the presence of her curtains signalled a subversion of modern architecture’s ideology of rigid rationality and ‘masculinity’.

This personal reconfiguring of Lilly Reich’s curtains and furniture in Nothing is certain, said The Curtain emerged as a sensual folly, a collaboration with Reich’s legacy of playful and innovative design. It is a tribute not only to Reich’s overlooked contribution to modernist architecture, but an engagement with the intricacies of the fabrication process. In particular, communication and collaboration. Thus, this exhibition was made possible through the combined skills of an architect, carpenter, welder, upholsterer, and artist.

Throughout my Masters project, curtains have acted as theatrical props to navigate the complexities of motherhood. When viewed through an autobiographical lens, curtains convey my desire for transformation, utopian realms of joy, embodying resistance to the limitations of conventionality. The curtains in Nothing is certain, said The Curtain are not static: they are moveable, changing position and location, embodying movement and fluidity. All of which may really be a discussion about access, visibility, and inclusion.

Please slide into some shoe covers, provided, as you enjoy the installation.

Ali Noble, 2023.