Ana Rita Albuquerque

Portugal

Ana Rita de Albuquerque, Covilhã, 1981.

Art informed by textile and by the transformative power of fibre.

Lives and works in Porto, Portugal.

Her work emerges from a sense of playful curiosity and the desire to explore meaning in manipulated shapes and forms, with a keen interest in the tension created when opponent qualities coexist and when the protocols of textile are pushed and questioned.

Intimately bound to prime matter, its origin, its immense plasticity and how it resonates with the human experience, there is a pertinence in the choice of wool as sculpting material that informs all her pieces.

Investigator, Art Educator and Maker.

Of special note on exhibitions: 2022,10- Transformação. Collective exhibition. Curatorship by Vasco Águas. LXLapa Art Gallery. Lisbon, Portugal. 2022,08- Chaos Is a DIVA; Permanent Installation Textile Sculpture commissioned by the NewHandLab. Covilhã, Portugal. 2020,09-Permanent exhibition of two floating pieces, for Porto Fashion & Fabric Museum, WOW, Gaia, Portugal. 2019.02-SanaVinculum, Solo exhibition, Textile Sculpture/Installation with interactive and sensorial technology, Museum of wool, Covilhã, Portugal. 2019,07-Into the gift, selected for the VIII Biennial of Contemporary Textile Art, Madrid, Spain. 2018,09- Déjàvu| Jamaisvu, textile sculpture of wool, water and glass, selected for the contemporary textile art biennial, Contextile, Guimarâes. Portugal. 2018,07- LoveIsLoud, Textile Sculpture/Installation with interactive and sensorial technology, turning touch into sound, Jardins Efémeros, Viseu. Portugal. 2017, 11- Hermès Windows, Hyper realistic wool sculptures, Chiado, lisbon. Portugal. 2017, 07- MÓNOLITO, interactive urban sculpture made of local wool and physical computing, Jardins Efémeros, Viseu. Portugal.

Of Special note on Art education: 2022,09- Guest Artist, Contextile, Biennale of Textile Art, Guimarães. Portugal. 2022,09-Guest teacher, Serralves, festa de Outono. 2022,06- Guest Jury for Art Schcool, Escola Artística António Arroio. Lisboa, Portugal. 2022,05-Textile Sculpture and felt making class, in the scope of Fashion Revolution week, for the fashion and Design students at UBI. Covilhã. Portugal. 2019,11-Guest teacher at UBI ‘University of Beira Interior’ Master Class on wearable technology, method developed for embedding electronic circuits into textile, making soft circuits, sensors and actuators. 2018, 03- Guest teacher, project Apex of Vastitude, Textile sculpture made in collaboration with all the 300 students of the 1st and 2nd year of Fashion Design at the UBI, University of Beira Interior, Covilhã. Portugal. Ano letivo 2017/18- Guest teacher at the Soares dos Reis Art School, development of FCT, learning and working with artists program, with the finalists of the textile art production. Resulting in a collection of works unde the theme “what is love”, composed of textile sculpture and interactive and sensorial technology, exhibited to the public at the Fundação/Foundation Sculptor José Rodrigues.

Exhibition
"Chaos and Love"
2022, November - Lisbon.

CHAOS Is a Diva ou Efeito Borboleta.

This piece comes to life through an invitation to produce work during an artist residency at NewHandLab, a creative factory rooted in Covilhã's industrial and textile history. Technically, this piece provided a fusion between my native felting method and tufting, using the local tufting infrastructure and materials while gaining experience and know-how in the tufting technique in order to have enough mastery to carry out the purpose of the piece. Working with tufted wool and felted wool offered the opportunity to develop texture and surface creation methods that respected the nature of both materials and maintained a true communication of all my intentions with this complex sculpture. Here, the fundamental concept of this sculpture was to embody the mathematical equation that describes the qualities of the point from which stability moves into instability or order becomes disorder.

This irregular and unpredictable temporal evolution of many linear and non-linear systems is called Chaos. Examples of chaotic systems include the behavior of a puff of smoke or turbulence in the ocean, even a river current. This equation d(t)=d(0)e.at ; it has a visual distribution and is known as the Lorenz curve or attractor, after the mathematician Edward Lorenz. Two circles collapse in on themselves creating a shape a bit like a butterfly, the so-called butterfly effect. The choice to give form to Chaos in textiles in this magnificent place with its ghost machines that are sometimes still heard together with all the shining souls that today keep them company, is solemnly felt and was embedded in every fiber of this sculpture while trying to give form to this Chaos complexity of calculations and patterning, with a sharp thought that after all, Chaos has a body that contains it and lives in Covilhã. Portugal

Materials: Canvas; Three-ply woolen yarn; felted wool.

Chamamento.Chama.Amamento.Ama.

Based on the notion that calling is a craft of seduction, of exquisite attention that transforms the caller into the called person and holds for a moment in a suspended and indefinite space, a space of waiting and possibilities.

This textile sculpture embodies that space. It moves in the act of calling. It wants to be hypnotic, languid and crystallize that pending moment that reason has not yet penetrated.

Sculpted from Portuguese wool with a striking resemblance to its sinuosities and almost ready to provide answers, to come with us or to move away from everyone, it is all in its silence and stillness that it calls.

Materials/technique-Portuguese wool, silk. Hand Felting and Sculpting.

LOVEisLOUD, And I am Sound

Exhibited at Jardins Efémeros 2018, Viseu. Solo Exhibition at the Wool Museum 2019. Covilhã.

A textile piece to touch, a sound sculpture, a circuit that closes between people and their bodies.

From the idea that it is impossible to love in secret and all love is scandalous. That the body changes when it is a vehicle of desire, touch and care, which pulsates in a perceptible tone to all the senses.

Materials/technique: Portuguese felted and sculpted wool. Built-in interactive electronics. Arduino, Custom Sensors, Synthesizer and Speakers. Its operation is based on the touch of skin between people, the touch of a circuit (earth). This measures the intensity of the same and transforms it into sound through a programmed synthesizer, turning the power of the touch into sound waves.