en
- de
- en
This fragment is part of the "CulturalxCollabs - Weaving the Future" carpet.
Through the fragment we trace the journey of the fragment owners and their collabs as they explore, experiment and creatively advance socially relevant themes. Here is the fragment as we are sending it on this three and a half-year journey.
Follow this story to observe the transformations the fragment undergoes over the course of these years...
The journey begins...
...with Kevin Wong
I was invited into #CulturalxCollabs through the fragment #77 of a 17th-century dragon carpet - a piece of cultural memory that has crossed geographies, centuries, and now digital space.
Rather than treating the fragment as something to preserve behind glass, I approached it as something still alive. Something that could continue to speak. Not by explaining its past, but by meeting people where they are now.
My collaboration explores the space between past and future, material and digital, embodiment and abstraction. Using generative AI, text, image, sound, and narrative, I created an interactive experience where the carpet fragment speaks in the first person - not as a tool, not as an authority, but as a reflective presence. It does not give answers. It reflects attention, posture, questions, and stillness back to the visitor.
This work is intentionally unfinished. There is no final image, no definitive interpretation. Instead the art lives in the act of asking - in the conversation, and in the way each person brings their own cultural context, technology, and moment in time into the exchange. Every interaction becomes a new interpretation, shaped by the visitor rather than imposed by the artwork.
For me, cultural diversity is not something static or historical. It is something continuously re-interpreted. The carpet fragment becomes a bridge between analogue artefacts and digital systems, between inherited culture and emerging futures, between human presence and the technologies we choose to build.
This collaboration reflects a belief that technology is not the opposite of culture, but one of its mirrors. What it reveals depends on how we approach it - with fear, or with curiosity, with control, or with care.
CulturalxCollabs offered a rare opportunity to treat cultural heritage not as a finished story, but as a living conversation. This work is one possible future for that conversation - open, participatory, and shaped by the shared humanity of those who step into it.
Front and Back
About the Project
The Museum for Islamic Art's project, #CulturalxCollabs - Weaving the future, celebrates the transformative power of cultural exchange and the shared threads that unite us all. All the things we love, have loved and will ever love come from cultural exchange, migration and diversity, or as we like to call it #CulturalxCollabs.
100 carpet fragments, cut from a replica of the iconic dragon carpet, will travel the world (delivered by DHL). The fragments will ignite #CulturalxCollabs with co-creators, inspiring human ingenuity, fostering community and ultimately demonstrating how cultural exchange enriches all our lives.
Follow #CulturalxCollabs on Instagram as the project unfolds...
...or learn more here
Weaving the Future
Join us on a journey with 100 carpet fragments as they travel around the world for three and a half years, finding temporary homes while bridging cultural boundaries, fostering worldwide community united by the power of human stories.
Fragment Journeys
100 carpet fragments part of the "CulturalxCollabs - Weaving the Future" project. Follow their journeys through the ever changing owners' over three and a half years.
Where is the Dragon?
The star of the "CulturalxCollabs - Weaving the Future" project is a so-called Caucasian dragon carpet from the 17th century. A dragon carpet - all well and good - but: where is the dragon?
Cultural x Collabs Tutorial + FAQs
How can I upload my material? These and many other questions are answered here.
