Hypertextile is a learning and production residency grant organized by Cortex Frontal (Arraiolos, Portugal).
In my case, I was based in Mértola, a village in the Baixo Alentejo with a very rich historical past, shaped by the Guadiana River, where I had the opportunity to learn from the weavers at the Oficina de Tecelagem (Weaving Workshop).
This cooperative was established in the late 1980s, as part of a regional archaeological recovery project, with the aim of preserving ancestral knowledge and textile techniques. The workshop is a living museum, where looms and tools over 300 years old are still in use. There, wool is washed, carded, and spun, then skeined, wound, warped, and beamed, before finally being woven into traditional blankets featuring a variety of patterns.
During the residency, I worked on these looms, whose wooden parts have been rounded and polished by the wear of countless hands over generations. In my own process, instead of weaving with wool, I used fragments of old and discarded paintings as if they were thread, incorporating them into the textile-making process.
The resulting works become woven-paintings or pictorial tapestries hybrid pieces that explore the boundaries between painting and textile. These works invite us to reflect on the passage of time, transformation, repair, and change, while highlighting color, composition, materiality, and manual labor.
Painting, which originally rests upon fabric, is here fragmented to once again become fabric. A fabric that acts as a meeting point between past and present, where different temporalities intertwine to create a visual, cultural, and symbolic palimpsest much like Mértola itself, a town steeped in history that has, over the centuries, embraced multiple civilizations: Islamic, Roman, and Christian.
The resulting works become woven-paintings or pictorial tapestries hybrid pieces that explore the boundaries between painting and textile. These works invite us to reflect on the passage of time, transformation, repair, and change, while highlighting color, composition, materiality, and manual labor.
Painting, which originally rests upon fabric, is here fragmented to once again become fabric. A fabric that acts as a meeting point between past and present, where different temporalities intertwine to create a visual, cultural, and symbolic palimpsest much like Mértola itself, a town steeped in history that has, over the centuries, embraced multiple civilizations: Islamic, Roman, and Christian.
