Fragment No. 80

Dragon carpet fragment #80 - Evening celebration on the dragon carpet

I received the fragment #80 from my friend composer Rafael Llanos from Bogotá, Colombia, with whom I have made few projects together while living in Italy. I was very happy to be nominated from his side for this project, since we live now on the other continents, art is still connecting us.

I got the fragment from DHL, from another part of the world - isn't this amazing, I thought. This carpet is going to inspire piece of art which I will make and it is going to be a part of bigger story that connects artists from all around the world.

When I was exploring the little piece I got, touching it, discovering its weight, and carefully observing the texture, colours, and the rhythm of the stitches, I got some pictures in my mind. They were telling the story of how this carpet welcomed a lot of celebrations where people gathered in the evenings in peace and they were telling stories, some of them sang, some of them played music, some of them danced... And quickly I got an idea for a composition of vibrant earthy colours in the painting, that would reflect the joy of being together and creating meaningful moments on this carpet.

Starting with the colour analysis and studies with acrylic colours on paper, I chose a 50 x 100 cm canvas to paint on. I wanted to create a soft and warm feeling so the brush strokes are rounded, but still bold and lustrous. Earthy colour palette and the rounded shape is inspired directly from the rug with my own feeling of experiencing the evening celebration on the rug. Brush strokes can become all the people that were sitting on this carpet, each one of them telling their own unique story. The blue ones telling tales about peace, the warm yellow ones about joy, red about courage, and brownish about companionship. Through the painting process I went on a journey of imagining perfect moments of little joys on the carpet, making from it a completely new piece of art.

The result is a painting Evening celebration on the dragon carpet (2026), a piece that stands for softness, grounding, peace and community, and transcends it through movement and rhythm.

The painting is a vibrant composition that reflect the feelings of abundance, movement and richness of the all senses. It is a visual journey that brings us back to the past and remember the memories that we are all made from. If we look closer and closer, the universe expands in its vastness. From a small piece of carpet numerous stories and connections were born.

Dragon Carpet

Artist: Rafael Llanos P. (Bogotá, Colombia)

Medium: Electroacoustic Composition

Inspiration: Ancient Caucasian Dragon Carpet Fragment #80

This work is a multidisciplinary response to the symbolic and aesthetic language found within an ancient Caucasian dragon carpet. It translates the visual complexity of traditional weaving into a visceral soundscape, exploring the tension between a physical artifact and the intangible nature of memory. By deconstructing the rug's history into a series of "sonic shards," the piece seeks to weave a bridge between the physical and the digital, the ancient and the future.

The Weaving of Sound

The sonic foundation of the composition is built from fragments of traditional Caucasian music, specifically centered around the soulful recordings of the duduk. These melodies act as the "weathered wool" of the piece—earthy, melancholic, and deeply grounded in history. Much like the individual knots of a rug, these audio fragments are layered to create a dense, vibrating texture that mirrors the rug’s shifting colors and sharp, angular motifs. The duduk’s organic breath provides a ghostly link to the past, representing a culture that still breathes through its artifacts.

However, this traditional peace is frequently interrupted by piercing, high-frequency electronic interventions. These sounds—at times resembling mythic cries or digital distortion—mirror the rug’s fragmented geometry and vibrant, clashing palette. Here, the dragon emerges not as a static image, but as a living energy. It represents the "shrapnel" of time—the sharp, sometimes aggressive transition from the ancestral past to a chaotic, high-energy future.

A Meditation on Continuity

Ultimately, the piece investigates the connection between ancestral time and a conceptual future. By connecting historical recordings with contemporary synthesis, the work invites the listener to experience the "dragon" as a timeless icon—a creature that navigates the thin line between what has been preserved and what is yet to be imagined.