For Ouvrages de Dames, Ariane Toussaint explored the matriarchal lineage within her family history. She discovered how textiles and handicrafts have played a unifying role across generations. This personal history sparked a fascination with traditional textile techniques and the often unseen labour involved.

For the series, Toussaint collected textiles from her family archive and combined these with found fabrics of diverse origins, including Eastern European fabrics and traditional textiles from Volendam and Marken that are no longer being produced. She brought these materials together in monumental patchworks of everyday and functional textiles, such as tea towels, bed linen and tablecloths. Over these, she screen-printed enlarged details of embroidery motifs from old needlework books.

In her work, various layers of personal and collective history converge. Despite their diverse origins, the fabrics form a cohesive whole. In this way, Toussaint demonstrates how patterns, techniques and signs of wear convey stories of care, labour and community. The screen-printed details reveal a visual language that, for a long time, existed primarily within the private sphere of women. By presenting the domestic on a monumental scale, she invites the public to rediscover an appreciation for the cultural and artisanal value of hand-made textiles.

Ariane Toussaint is the seventh artist in a series of eight solo presentations at the Palace of Justice. The exhibition is curated by Daphne Verberg and is a collaboration between Atelier Rijksbouwmeester and Nest.