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MONUMENTAL AND ETHEREAL, THE “NATURAL SENSITIVITY” OF YU WEN-FU
| by Elena Redaelli | In Pingtung, wind is a constant presence. At the sites of the Luo Shan Feng Arts Festival, gusts arrive suddenly and relentlessly, slipping through narrow streets, under shop shutters, and into the cracks of old houses facing the coast. It was there that I first saw one of Yu Wen-Fu’s woven bamboo works in progress: an organic membrane of culms and slats wrapping around the surviving walls, embracing the architecture’s voids and making the wind’s direction visible. This relationship between place, structure and air is a hallmark of his practice. It runs through the Taiwanese artist’s work from his early projects to his large-scale installations.…
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HANNALIE TAUTE: UNRULY EMBROIDERY – STORIES OF COLOUR AND SHADOW
| By Elena Redaelli | On slick, cold surfaces of recycled rubber, black as crude oil, or on sepia-toned vintage photographs, South African artist Hannalie Taute weaves coloured threads into seductive, unsettling stories. These stories are dense with metaphor and hidden meanings. Figures rise from her stitches: shouting, slipping in, digging deep. Nothing here is calm or soothing. The work plays openly with visceral fears. Your gaze is caught by uncompromising, brutal, courageous details. What draws you in is a magnetic narrative that sparks curiosity and leaves you uneasy, just beneath the skin. Through her art, Taute prods our most intimate reactions. Her disobedience plays with stereotypes. Taute steps into…
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KARIN VAN DEL MOLEN: MESHWORK AS PRACTICE. REWEAVING CONTEMPORARY ART THROUGH MAKING-WITH SITE, MATTER, AND MEANING
| By Elena Redaelli | Karin van der Molen’s practice moves fluidly through contemporary art’s mediums and categories. She treats definitions as working edges, reshaping them as meanings emerge. Sculpture can function as an ecosystem, installation can hold encounters, and materials act as active partners with their own tempo, resistance, and demands. What links her trajectory is not a single signature form, but a method: a commitment to making-with. With others, with specific sites, with the agency of materials, and with the layered meanings places carry through history, labor, and lived experience. The term meshwork captures this approach with peculiar precision. Anthropologist Tim Ingold describes meshwork as an entanglement of…
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WEAVING PLACES: LOCATING IDENTITY THROUGH TEXTILE LANGUAGE
| by Elena Redaelli | “Through their production, materials, and decorative motifs—closely intertwined with the cultural and social histories of different places—textiles offer a lens through which to explore cultural similarities, differences, and change. As matter, textiles are rooted in specific places, but they also trace our migrations across the globe.”(Kettle, A. 2019) With the exhibition chapter Weaving Places, curator Silvia Colombo and co-curator Ana Victoria Bruno guide the audience through a compelling exploration of how textile traditions reflect and have shaped geographic and cultural belonging in Norrbotten, a region in northern Sweden rich in layered identities. Part of the Futures 2025 exhibition program at HAVREMAGASINET in Boden, Sweden, the…
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TERESA PUIG – MUTABLE ESSENCE
| by Elena Redaelli | Teresa Puig is a Spanish artist living and working in Norway. Her work is based on a close observation of space; she pays attention to the ephemeral and transitory aspects of the natural world. She refers to her works as “scenarios,” spatial installations in which she combines projected images, lights, and objects made of paper, threads, textiles, and natural elements. Her work spans from drawings and photography to the latest developments in traditional textile techniques, such as weaving, hand knotting, and natural dyes from local sources. Teresa has been travelling a lot, and her practice bears influences from different cultures. “My latest work is textile-based,…
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MARTA NERHUS: WHEN METAL BECOMES THREAD AND STORY
|by Elena Redaelli | Marta Nerhus, a Norwegian textile artist, seamlessly challenges the boundaries of material and expression from her studio at USF Verftet in Bergen. She is currently engaged in a new commission, having won a competitive selection process, to decorate a church in Klepp, Rogaland, which is set to be completed in October 2026. In recent years, she has curated the exhibition program at Galleri Banken in Ølve, where she held a solo exhibition in 2023. If you wish to get an introduction to Marta Nerhus’ work and artistic vision, you can find a brief portrait of her in the American documentary Knit with Love, which explores the…
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LEME – LIDIA MENEGHINI. BETWEEN DESIGN AND NATURE
| di Elena Redaelli | Lidia Meneghini, aka LEME, is a textile artist who blends the languages of sculpture, fashion design, and collage to create unique works. After seven years as an assistant in a sculpture workshop, she graduated in 2012 in Arts and Entertainment from IUAV at the University of Venice. That same year, she received a scholarship for the master’s program in “Bag Design and Product Development” at IUAV in collaboration with Bottega Veneta. In 2016, she moved to Valencia, Spain, where she worked in the costume atelier of the Palau de les Arts opera house. In 2024, she became a Project Coordinator at Capsule Gallery in Venice.…
