Weaving With Nature
A conversation with Tarantula: Authors And Art's Inspiration for December Paola Anziché
Paola Anziché explores the relationship between the practice and transmission of traditional weaving techniques and biodiversity using natural fibers. She considers her work to be finished only when she invites viewers to participate. At times this may merely be by smelling the scent of beeswax in her work, other times it’s about trying on gear and becoming part of the narrative of the work itself.
Anziché masterfully weaves material and concepts together, researching the past and present, allowing her hands to touch and feel, and sinking into the known and unknown. She facilitates multidisciplinary dialogues through her extensive network of friends and associates, and as a result, each individual piece of art evolves organically and takes its own unique path.
Material culture and ecological relevance are central themes of exploration in Anziché’s work. What ancient stories and which memories may become accessible when using a certain material? How do we as humans relate to natural materials, and what are the possible consequences of our choices?
Tarantula: Authors and Arts: I met you at the opening of a group exhibition titled ‘The Mountain Touch.’ You presented a piece titled ‘La terra suona’ from 2022. What can you tell us about this work?
Paola Anziché: The concept behind this work emerged during the Covid period, when those of us living in cities were confined indoors, longing to breathe fully in open spaces. At that time, I was working with melted beeswax, and each time I inhaled its soothing scent, I felt an overwhelming sense of calm and relaxation. This daily encounter sparked a desire to immerse myself in the aroma of beeswax even more, so I united two materials that are close to my heart—beeswax and textile. This work took shape over time, inviting an audience to explore it through scent and physical connection by lying on the ground.
While searching for references on the world of bees, I came upon ‘Lectures on Bees’ (1923) by Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy. According to Steiner, bees represent a perfect model of harmonious and cooperative community, and their social order provides profound wisdom about the workings of both nature and humanity. Beeswax, according to anthroposophical philosophy, is a medium that connects humans to natural rhythms and cosmic forces. Steiner looked at the production of beeswax as a process endowed with cosmic knowledge, since the wax is secreted by the bees and used to build the hive, a perfect structure reflecting balance and collaboration.
'La terra suona' invites you to dive in, as well as reflect on the complex relationship between art and nature. As you step into this environment, you will notice the persistent presence of a delicate aroma—the perfume of beeswax, emitted from a woven net overhead, forming a sort of suspended carpet. Fabric strips soaked in beeswax, intertwine in a gentle play of colors. Beeswax has a calming, almost meditative effect, enveloping the senses, and inviting a deeper connection with the space around you.
Which factors would you say have influenced your work?
My extensive research journey has resulted in the art you see today. It has taken me to locations rich in archeological history, craft traditions, and ecology, where indigenous knowledge and oral culture intertwine with manual techniques and ancient technology rooted in gesture and thought.
What roots you in your practice on a personal level, is there something specific you’re out to ‘grasp’?
I am passionate about natural materials and use them in my work to create a tactile and engaging experience for viewers. My research is based on journeys through a variety of settings. During these excursions and activities, I interact with numerous craft traditions that have evolved over time through a subjective re-invention process.
Approaching natural/vegetable fabrics allows me to gain a greater understanding of cultural and material life in both urban and suburban contexts. This enables me to form an ecological relationship with the environment and its residents. My artwork is completely cognizant of and responds to environmental issues. I choose not to use synthetic or polluting materials in the development of my work.
I use an ecological perspective to create works that allow the spectator to feel their form. This requires observing related political and environmental challenges, as well as the spatial and territorial changes that contribute to their manifestation.
In your recent piece titled ‘La dama di Cartagine’ you encourage people to wear the headdress you created to position themselves inside the story of the work. Please tell us a bit about the background of this work and how you envision the narrative to evolve.
In mid-September of this year, I spent two weeks in Sant'Antioco with the non-profit organization Ottovolante Sulcis in Sardegna in a residency program, where I was requested to research the island's history and traditions. Sant'Antioco is incredibly ancient, given the populations that have resided there, including the Nuragic culture, Phoenicians, and others. You feel history as you wander through the area, the subterranean villages, the necropolis, and as you get closer to the sea, you can see and walk through the Nuragic towers nestled among the Mediterranean vegetation.
The locals have many stories to share. Some are personal, while others concern the place and its archaeology. Each person appears to keep a piece of history at home—small Nuragic fragments, little heads, and constant encounters with the past.
As a final presentation, I decided to design a headdress with its own invented story that is directly tied to the unique characteristics of this place, its beauty, and its scents. I wanted to collaborate with Sandro Caranzano, an archaeologist who has been guiding tours through Nuragic villages in Sardinia for years. Together, we crafted a narrative to accompany the exhibition of the headdresses, titled ‘La dama di Cartagine.’ Visitors were invited to listen to my reading at the opening while sporting the headpiece as a simulacrum, therefore becoming part of the story themselves.
In terms of your own work, in relation to developments in society, what do you see when you envision the future?
I wouldn't know how to answer that question. I focus on the present, on my work.
I love how you describe the work, the wearing of the headdress and your collaboration with the archaeologist. I interpret your work as a dialogue with the past, a kind of resurrection of the old civilization and its inhabitants, something archaic. Therefore, your last answer takes me by surprise. If we are the current custodians here on earth, I feel it upon us to be visionary about the future. As a result, I am interested in learning more about your point of view.
I adopt working methods that aren’t strictly planned, allowing the creative process to develop fluidly, guided by my interests, encounters, and collaborations that arise along the way. Rather than following a predetermined path, I see each project as an organic and evolving composition.
I have a network of friends and collaborators across disciplines, including anthropologists, archaeologists, and botanists, with whom I frequently engage in innovative and interdisciplinary exchanges that enhance my research.
Material culture and ecological significance are major topics in my practice, therefore I tend to focus on the past and the present, on the "here and now" experience, rather than a long-term plan for future work. Ultimately, I view art as a dynamic process that reflects life and thrives on the connections and exchanges that occur along the way.
Despite this spontaneity, I ensure that each piece retains a trace, a set of instructions, a sort of "code" that preserves and conveys my intentions. Each work is accompanied by a dedicated instruction or publication, documenting its process and context, thus offering a tool for interpretation that ensures continuity and memory.
Thank you for this explanation. Another thing which I believe your work does is a kind of ‘agentification’ of the audience. By that I mean it’s as if you ask the viewer to unlock some otherwise hidden capacity when engaging with your work. Would you say this is part of your intention?
I'm not analytical at all; if I were, my work wouldn’t intrigue me, nor would it have room to evolve. And that’s precisely the beauty of it: discovering what you’re doing step by step. Even when I start working with a new natural material, it feels like a journey. My hands need to become familiar with it, and together with the mind, they find unexpected solutions.
In my artistic practice, I explore various lines of inquiry. Among these, I organize workshops for all ages, adapting them to specific contexts, along with other projects linked to participatory weaving aimed at investigating how textile art can explore and translate cohabitation, collaboration, mutual exchange.
For some time, my research has engaged with an anthropic dimension in relation to natural materials, each time prompting a reflection on the role they activate within the socio-cultural, economic, and ecological spheres.
The participatory element stems from my previous research into the work of Brazilian artist Lygia Clark. She was alaso a lecturer at Paris's Sorbonne University from 1970 to 1975. In my artistic journey, I have experimented with a range of expressive methods, including performance, dance, music, photography, drawing, documentary, and even story forms. Over time, I began to envision devices, real environments that embrace the viewer and allow them to physically feel the work, without necessarily making it playful. That experience taught me that when you create a work and make it available to people, new stories, narratives, and memories become woven into it.
In 2011, I made a film on Lygia Clark that explores, through the memories of five participants, various experiences from their class, "The Gesture Communication," which Clark led at the beginning of the 1970s. Personal testimonials complement the restoration of Super 8 films by portraying specific times as a type of group ritual. Using their recollections and the few precious remaining images, they recall and narrate various incidents indicative of the severe conditions they experienced in person.
In that way we could say you work as an agent to produce memories. I really appreciate your take on the process of making your work accessible to an audience which in your case clearly implies a desire for transformation. I’m interested in the way art may clear a path to such indirect societal transformation. How individuals may feel encouraged to imagine themselves as ‘inter-beings’ in relation to and in communication with nature and our immediate surrounding world. A connection which we increasingly seem to forget. As a last question, I’d like to know a bit about your current work and investigation.
A few years ago, I was in a Guatemalan village, visiting a Mayan weaver. The oral culture of hands and memory came alive as I watched her work. A backstrap-woven Mayan textile has both warp and weft, yet the intricate designs emerge from the swift, skillful movements of the weaver’s fingers. It’s incredible—they follow no pre-drawn pattern. Everything is stored in memory as a choreography of threads being lifted and interwoven. Unless you see it with your own eyes, it’s impossible to imagine the level of skill passed down from grandmother to mother to daughter. Unfortunately, touchscreens and mobile phones are increasingly distracting the younger generations, putting this tradition at risk.
For years, I have been drawn to natural materials and plant-based fibers, continuously pondering an important question: why should art ignore environmental concerns? Why use harmful dyes when more sustainable practices are available? This line of inquiry sparked an extensive and ongoing exploration into plant fibers and their origins. Last year, I started making bio-materials out of algae to extend my journey.
Furthermore, from 2019 until the present, I have been working on a series called 'Exercises in Memory,' which comprises of bas-reliefs mimicking hidden drawings and geometric shapes that can be rotated 360 degrees to change their color and reflection.I use wild oat stalks collected at different times of the year, which display shimmering hues of yellow and green. Working with this material is a pleasure; it’s a process akin to creating mandalas, requiring patience, calm, and natural light. The woven straw in these pieces is both practical and rich in symbolic, ritual value, deeply tied to agricultural cycles and our connection to the earth. Straw wreaths, for example, were historically placed in homes as symbols of good luck or to commemorate the harvest.
Today the relationship with the harvest and the farmer has shifted. The cycles that traditionally governed both rural and social life have changed, with traditional ties to the land being gradually displaced by industrialized processes. This shift has impacted not only how we perceive food and materials but also the value we place on the knowledge and rituals embedded in farming practices. Material culture, long studied by anthropologists, embodies human creativity at its most refined, distilled over centuries. Natural fibers were weaved into daily objects long before plastic was invented, demonstrating incredible skill and deep understanding inherent in these techniques. hese works reflect a collective intelligence that has evolved over generations, much like the anonymous beauty of vernacular architecture.
Thank you Paola for chatting with us about your work. If you would like to find out more about Paola’s work, visit her web page or Instagram.
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