MORPHOSIS: Vanessa Barragão and Catarina Nunes

 

The exhibition enlightens the exceptional encounter between the fibre art designer, Vanessa Barragão, and the ceramist Catarina Nunes. Despite the distinctness of the techniques and materials they use, Nunes and Barragão create biomorphic and proliferating shapes that reflect their deep connection to nature's dynamics and expressions. Both artists embrace an environmental sensibility and vision along with a genuine interest in querying natural phenomena from the point of view of the unseizable relation between matter and energy. 

In line with the modernist movement, which was developed from the mid-twentieth century onwards, the two of them appropriate and redefine age-old techniques and traditional materials according to refreshing and innovative approaches.

Catarina Nunes mainly works across sculptural ceramics and installation. Using the four primary elements of earth, water, air and fire as well as a wide variety of materials such as faience and stoneware, porcelain, blown glass, metal and mica, the artist creates her marine inspired world of organic shapes and mysterious creatures, while experimenting with questions related to spatiality and volumetry. Nunes also delves into the physics of salt crystals that she grows on her wall-mounted structures conceived as three dimensional scribbles. In addition to the interaction between ceramics and sculpture, the artist also expands her practice into the realm of contemporary installation, mixing different mediums.

 

Like previous pioneering artists did in the field of fibre art when they first broke away from the rectangle, the frame and then with the wall — thus expanding the medium’s possibilities — Barragão experiments with volumetry, spatiality, gravity and dimensionality, while transcending the weight and constraints of materials. Using mainly reused materials such as wool, tencel and jute, and mixing techniques including crochet, felting, latch hook and other fibre manipulations, her approach involves recycling and reconverting waste from the textile industry. Barragão's production is fuelled by her spiritual questions, to which she seeks answers through exploration of the plant kingdom and marine life.

Morphosis highlights the way in which Nunes and Barragão expand their respective field of action when producing composite, interactive and multimedia installations using original displays, video, sound recordings and motion sensors. While working with ancestral techniques — traditionally associated with handicrafts and applied arts — they push the boundaries of fibre art and ceramics, while combining the two fields in an atypical an revitalising manner.