Vanessa Barragão Portugal, b. 1992
The Portuguese artist, Vanessa Barragão, works within the realm of fibre art. As a textile designer, the artist draws her inspiration from nature, which impulses the processes, themes, shapes and colours she explores throughout her creations. Showing a special capacity for scale, Barragão produces sculptural wall-mounted or suspended installations that oscillate between non-representational compositions and references to either landscapes of surfaces and textures, to body organs or to some unidentified creatures. Using mainly wool, tencel and jute and mixing techniques such as crochet, knotting, braiding and other fibre manipulations, Barragão creates organic forms and patterns that proliferate across the surface, often calling to mind seabeds with their diversity of marine organisms, corals, algaes, pebbles and shells. The artist also integrates LED lighting systems within the textile panels, thus creating luminous and immersive displays.
In line with the modernist movement of fibre sculpture, which was developed from the mid-twentieth century onwards, Barragão appropriates and redefines age-old techniques and traditional materials according to refreshing and innovative approaches. As previous pioneers artists in the field of fibre art did, such as Françoise Grossen, when they first broke with the rectangle, with the frame and then with the wall, thus expanding the medium’s possibilities, Barragão experiments with spatiality, gravity, and dimensionality while transcending the materials’ weight and constraints.
Beyond her deep connection to nature, seasons and cycles, the artist also embraces an environmental sensibility and vision. Her approach not only involves practices of recycling and reconversion of left-overs and scraps coming from the textile industry, but also embodies the new trend towards slowing down growth along with the processes of transformation and production.
The textile artist and designer, Vanessa Barragão, lives and works in Algarve (Portugal). During her formation in fashion design at ULisboa (2010-2016), she founded the Studio Vanessa Barragão in Albufeira and became director of Fábrica Artesanal Tapetes Beiriz in 2016. Her works have been exhibited in several collective exhibitions worldwide among which Festival Iminente in Lisbon (2022), “(Im)materiality” at Not a Museum, Lisbon and CCA, Águeda PT (2022), “Flora | Fauna | Fibre: Textiles in Contemporary Art” at Mary M. Torggler Fine Arts Center, USA (2022), ”The Art of Mushrooms” at Museu Serralves, Porto (2022), “Crafting A More Human Future - Homo Faber Event” at Fondazioni Giorgio Cini, Venezia, IT (2022), “Pour L’Amour du Fil”: Salon International des Arts du Fil at Grand Palace, Nantes, FR (2022), “Tools for Conviviality”, at Cheongju Craft Biennale, Cheongju, KR (2021), “Underneath the Serene Sky at CoBrA Gallery, in Shanghai, PRC (2021) and ”Threads + Colour 2’” at KPC Yarn, SYD, AU (2017).
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MORPHOSIS
Vanessa Barragão and Catarina Nunes 29 June - 1 October 2023Morphosis: Catarina Nunes and Vanessa Barragão MU.SA | curatorship and texts by Katherine Sirois The exhibition enlightens the exceptional encounter between the fibre art designer, Vanessa Barragão, and the ceramist...Read more -
PARAGONE: What’s with mediums today?
INTERNATIONAL GROUP SHOW 26 May - 20 August 2023In the context of the Lisbon Art Week, the international contemporary art exhibition 'PARAGONE: What's with mediums today?' will open on May 26, in three exhibition centres: Cape Verde Cultural...Read more -
(IM)MATERIALITY
Group Show: Águeda's Art Center 1 October 2022 - 15 January 2023Following the success achieved during the presentation in Lisbon, and at the invitation of Águeda's Municipality, the exhibition (IM)MATERIALITY will itinerate to Águeda Arts Center in October. “(IM)MATERIALITY” promotes a...Read more -
(IM)MATERIALITY
GROUP SHOW: Not a Museum 20 May - 12 August 2022'(IM)MATERIALITY' is curated by Graça Rodrigues, Sónia Ribeiro, Katherine Sirois, Lourenço Egreja, and Diogo Bento, and exhibits, through three distinct nuclei, a significant combination of media, ranging from painting to...Read more
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(IM)MATERIALITY Águeda's Art Centre
RTP, 8 October 2022 -
(IM)MATERIALITY - Daniel Madeira em ARTE & CULTURA para a Umbigo Magazine
Umbigo, 13 February 2023 -
Águeda Arts Center hosts exhibition of more than 40 artists: a reflection on the materiality and immateriality
Comunidade Cultura e Arte, 26 September 2022 -
Angolan artists participate in international exhibition
Roque Silva, Jornal de Angola, 24 May 2023 -
ART PARIS, 25TH Anniversary
artprice.com, 17 March 2023 -
International Contemporary Art Exhibition will be in Lisbon starting May 26
Lusa e SIC Notícias, 16 May 2023 -
THIS IS NOT A WHITE CUBE is present in the 25th edition of the contemporary art fair Art Paris
Observador, 24 January 2023 -
Vanessa Barragão | Culture is Key
UNESCO, 30 March 2023 -
Vanessa Barragão | Emerging Artists to Follow
BeauxArts, 30 March 2023 -
Vanessa Barragão: the vision and the process behind the work
Vinicius Ferreira, 28 February 2020 -
WHAT TO SEE IN ART PARIS
Le Point, 30 March 2023
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PARAGONE: What's with mediums today?
Group Show 29 June 2023 -
(IM)MATERIALITY
INTERNATIONAL GROUP SHOW AT ÁGUEDA ARTS CENTER 1 October 2022 -
(IM)MATERIALITY
international art exhibition 1 July 2022 -
Art can help to overcome the post-colonial Portugal-Africa stigmas
Interview with Graça Rodrigues and João Paulo Sacadura 6 June 2022Interview with Graça Rodrigues, conducted by journalist João Paulo Sacadura for the Portuguese radio station 'Observador' - podcast 'Convidado Extra.' Graça Rodrigues is co-artistic director...Read more -
Vanessa Barragão: the vision and the process behind the work
28 February 2020