Vanessa barragao is a contemporary textiles artists working in Porto, portugal not far from where she was born. she grew up in a seaside village surrounded by countryside, something that has clearly inspired much of her work. she found crochet and drawing to be her first experience with expressive art, learning both as crafts from a young age. She completed her undergraduate and masters in lisbon studying fashion design where she learned about her interest in ecological issue and connected them to her work. She left to continue on her focus in textiles working as a designer and gradually came to find her own projects, eventually opening her own studio.

She approaches each project without a strict plan, allowing the material and her feelings guide her; this results in a very organic looking outcome. She uses a wide variety of techniques such as latch hook crochet, weaving, embroidery and felt creating an interesting array of textures that couldn’t be achieved with just one process. These techniques are also ones taught to her by her grandmothers and through her work she wants to carry the traditions forward so that they don’t get forgotten in time. It is important to her that all the materials she uses are waste from portuguese factories, her work tackles themes of environment so her practice has to be sustainable.

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Her work abstractly replicates coral reefs with layers of varying textures and crocheted structures. It doesn’t follow the typical form of a wall hanging because of the irregular shapes, i like how it spreads out differently and avoids any strict structure. she uses mostly bright colours to replicate an ocean floor but also blanks out areas with beiges and whites to represent the bleaching of coral. i find these parts particularly interesting as it reminds me of skin or body like shapes and crevasses and it allows the viewer to see what her techniques can achieve. I am also inspired by what she can achieve with only wool, i would like to try and utilize some of her techniques to enhance some of the textures in my weaving. When reading about textiles artists ive noticed that most often their first encounters with those materials are from female figures in the family, this reminds me of the connotations around this material and i would like to delve further into this to tie it back to my theme. I feel that when you look at her work you can see the hours that went into it, i think that tapestries relate closely to storytelling. Im thinking that this also relates to the idea that someone’s experience of nurture can be a long path that is very rarely steady, i like the idea of creating something that provides a feeling of nurture whilst also telling a story.