In southern Manitoba, artist Margruite Krahn's artistic project, “Resurfacing Mennonite Floor Patterns,” highlights an overlooked aspect of Mennonite culture: women's creativity. This project showcases historic floor patterns while delving into themes of home, tradition, and gender in a changing cultural context.
On Friday, November 8th, the “Resurfacing: Mennonite Floor Patterns” exhibit launched at the Grebel Gallery. Guests encountered a collection of vibrant, hand-painted art and engaged with Margurite, hearing firsthand about the significance of the pieces and the process of using natural, hand-cut stencils instead of manufactured tools. The launch featured a short film on the restoration process of historic painted farmhouse floors in Manitoba and concluded with an opportunity for attendees to ask Margurite questions. The exhibit will be on view until February 23rd, with the Grebel Gallery open Monday to Friday, 8:30 am – 10:00 pm.
Margruite lives in Neubergthal, an early Mennonite Street village and a National Historic Site, on Treaty One Land, land denied to the Métis Nation and granted to Mennonite settlers. Margruite’s passion for this art form began unexpectedly while renovating her historic “house barn” home where she uncovered a hand painted floor beneath layers of carpet and linoleum. Instead of covering up the discovery, Margruite saw an opportunity to restore and celebrate this art form, which led her to get involved in the Neubergthal Heritage Foundation. She became the project lead on the first restoration of a house barn, sparking a journey of research and storytelling that would go on to define her larger artistic work in this area.
Margruite's exploration of the patterns is not just an artistic endeavor but also a social and cultural investigation. Margruite has fostered a sense of community and dialogue that bridges past and present. In interviews with Mennonite women, some who painted the patterns, others who are daughters of the original artists, Margruite quickly realized the floor patterns were a lost form of feminine expression, a statement of beauty in a rigidly structured world. She also rekindled relationships with Roseau River Anishnaabe First Nation women, whose foremothers traded handmade rugs and baskets with Mennonite women.
One story highlighted in the exhibit shows a moment of revelation for Marguerite as she spoke with two Mennonite women from the community that migrated to Mexico and Paraguay in the 1920s. These women, living in a place marked by poverty and patriarchal constraints, would venture out each week to gather the materials for their art: manure, straw, and sawdust. They would carefully create sawdust floral patterns on their barn floors with a colander. Marguerite asked the women, "Did you spend your Saturday evenings doing this because you needed beauty?" The women firmly replied, "No" before pausing to reconsider. "You know, we did need beauty," they concluded, adding “We knew how to add pleats to our skirts too, the men couldn’t tell but we could!”
This moment encapsulates the essence of Krahn's project and her belief that "Art is the need for beauty, and how we express beauty."