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Armchair With New Upholstered Fabric | Jindřich Halabala | Up Závody | Czechoslovakia | 1950s

Anatomical Plaster Bust | Louis M. Meusel | Sonnenberg | Germany | 1920's

André Costa | My height | 2020 | acrilic on plaster | 175x53x10cm

Euphorbia

Transformação | 13th October - 20th November

Transformação presents a reflection about the textile universe, its multiple forms and approaches and the growing recognition of textile art or art informed by textile as a contemporary art form.

The motto for this group exhibition comes from a quote by Anni Albers about weaving: Weaving is an example of a craft which is many-sided. Besides surface qualities, such as rough and smooth, dull and shiny, hard and soft, it also includes color, and, as the dominating element, texture, which is the result of the construction of weaves. Like any craft it may end in producing useful objects, or it may rise to the level of art.

Transformação / Transformation as part of the growth and maturation of our creative process, as artists who have been exploring textile in its most varied and multifaceted forms, either through technique, material or process, as the main form of expression of our artistic practices. 

Transformation brings together works by Vasco Águas, also curator of this show, Ana Rita Albuquerque, Filipa Won, Graça Paz, Guida Fonseca, Maria Pratas, Rita Teles Garcia and Rita Sevilha

Ana Rita Albuquerque | @anarita_albuquerque

Visual artist informed by textiles and the transformative power of fibers, whose work emerges from a sense of playful curiosity and a desire to explore meanings, with particular interest in the tension created when opposing qualities coexist. With a vast body of work, from which she highlights most recently Chao is a Diva, commissioned by NewHandLab and selected pieces for the biennale of Contemporary Textile Art in Madrid and for Contextile.
Textile researcher, teacher and Maker.

Filipa Won | @defio.rugs

deFio rugs are born from a passion for working with the hands and a desire to pass to future generations the knowledge and the Portuguese cultural heritage. deFio rugs emerge with a new approach to the traditional Arraiolos rugs, highlighting the embroidery itself, expressing it in a simple design and combining the richness of the various types of Arraiolos embroidery stitches. An intense "Transformation" of the Arraiolos rug. It consists of a project created by Filipa Won, a dreamer, now 45 years old, very "daring", who simply believes in the generosity of life!

Graça Paz | @graca_paz_studio

My painting began in the sweetest memory of my childhood of seeing my father always in love with music. He worked with classical music
all his life and had a vinyl shop where I went to help him many times, and I remember the days when he came home late and closed himself to his zen moment and flooded our beds with Chopin, Bach and Ravel.

When I started painting, first figurative, my search was always on abstracts, like a first love, so it all made sense when a kind of bridge built itself in the perfect timming, between my work and music and the power of abstraction as a unique and individual inner sound...when I was ready and had the courage to start painting abstractly, I immediately perceived the intellectual demand that my choice brought me. There was behind the chosen forms a deep sense of being.

That was when Bach came and gave meaning to my work. He
brought me back the memories of my father's music, and that was the leap to interpret my favorite compositions on canvas like a golden hand that was given to me by fate, as in a dialogue between me and the composer or interpreter. It has become an exchange of emotions and the beginning of a long road leading me to the light in all themes that my interior needs to provide, with the knowledge that it takes only one man to change something for the better in other people's lives. Art comes to the artist first as a responsibility to serve. 

All this universe of feelings and study expresses itself through Acrylic paintings, watercolors and Hangups.

My name*s meaning conjuncts Grace (Graça) and Peace (Paz) and I was born on 4 of March 1967 in Porto, and l presently live and work in the Rural north of Portugal in Minho.

Guida Fonseca

Born in 1955. Textile artist, Guida creates and produces her own pieces.

Attended the Curso Geral de Artes da Escola António Arroio. Attended the atelier of Master Gisella Santi and was part of Group 345, Contemporary Portuguese Tapestry Association, founded by Gisella Santi. Fonseca exhibits regularly in Portugal and abroad. Collaborated in the organization of the II, III and IV International Symposia of Contemporary Tapestry, held by the City Council of Loures. In 2016 she was invited to represent Portugal at the 15th International Triennial of Tapestry, in Lodz, Poland. Guida teaches Tapestry, Weaving, Dyeing and Debuxo (sketching), and develops research work, safeguarding and reinterpreting traditional Portuguese weaving; carried out research on dyeing in the Azores Archipelago, materialized in the exhibition "Cores da Terra: A Tinturaria nas Ilhas", in 2019 at the Francisco Lacerda Museum in S. Jorge Island, alongside with the publication of a catalogue, co-authored by Catarina Dias da Rosa. In 2020/2021 Guida produced didactic content and executed pieces for the Fashion and Textile Museum in Vila Nova de Gaia, Porto. Guida Fonseca collaborates regularly with Cearte and Saber Fazer and has been awarded with several prizes, namely Prémio Quadrante (in 1995, 1996 and 1997) and Prémio de Aquisição, I Encontro de Tapeçaria Contemporânea, Loures, 2000.

Maria Pratas | @_maria_pratas_

Textile artist and teacher, Maria Pratas felt that her training in visual education, centered on visual content and two dimensionality, drove the need to create in three-dimensional plans. In this sense, the materials she uses are explored to give way to the creation of textile sculptures and the scale gains size.

Maria travels to various destinations, where a visit to a craftsperson’s workshop or an industrial loom is part of the itinerary. In her luggage she brings records that are triggers and from the knowledge of ancient craftspeople, the artist develops a fusion between various raw materials.

She walks creatively through her atelier, where the textile territory
always dominates the whole process.

While creating, Pratas can’t be distracted by time and, focused on her hands, the objects are sculpted thread by thread. She favors eclectic artistic environments, where each piece has a functional and artistic language. She seeks to make her creations come alive and be displayed in environments and places where they can be unique and transformative.

Rita Sevilha | @rita.sevilha

Rita Sevilha was born on the outskirts of Lisbon in 1980.

The universe of textiles - namely tapestry and weaving - are her vehicles of communication. In her work Sevilha is interested in the exploration of the "fabric" as a language, and the creation of objects that appeal to the senses, among them, one that we have so often neglected: touch.

Nature and its capacity for transformation and adaptation are one of her great inspirations.

Rita graduated in Architecture in Lisbon, after a school career dedicated to the Arts.

Rita Teles Garcia | @rita_kroh

Rita Teles Garcia grew up in Fatela.

With a degree in Sculpture from Faculdade de Belas Artes de Lisboa, Rita lives and works in Lisbon.

Rita worked 8 years in the educational service of the Berardo Museum, where she developed and ministered guided tours and activities for schools and the general public.

In 2017 Garcia started her collaboration as a sculptor at Studio Astolfi, where she develops artistic projects, namely artistic interventions at
WOW - Fashion and Textile Museum, window displays for Hermès or Castro.

Rita collaborates occasionally with other design and architecture studios developing site-specific pieces for interior design projects. At the same time, in 2012 created a project where she explores textiles, namely crochet, ceramics and embroidery.

Currently, Rita maintains a collection of ceramics with crochet details and develops several projects with textiles, especially custom embroidered tapestries.

Vasco Águas | @vasco.aguas

Vasco was born in Lagos but moved to Lisbon 20 years ago to study architecture. One of his most distant memories are, as a child, spending hours watching his grandfather Águas fusing lead sheets and turning them into sinkers which he used later for fishing. Or to be fascinated by the drawings that grandmother Cecília made to later transform into incredible embroidery. Like these ones, there are other memories and stories of this paternal grandfather and this maternal grandmother, whose abilities soon made him awaken to the most diverse crafts and to the need to keep them alive.

Vasco Águas created his textile art project with André Matos in 2016, having since then developed medium and large scale tapestries, in which he merges several techniques, from macrame to manual weaving. In addition to a large number of anonymous artists and artisans that he follows and admires, he highlights the artists Sheila Hicks, Anni Albers, Ann Hamilton and Beatriz González as main inspirations. 

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