One artist to do so is Peru-based textile artist Ana Teresa Barboza, who creates colorful embroidery art that depicts natural forms, found in plant life and landscapes. Her three-dimensional work often spills out from the confines of the embroidery hoop or canvas she’s working on, illustrating the sprawling growth of the organic subjects. Barboza’s latest work continues to push the boundaries of embroidery by incorporating different disciplines, such as illustration and photography.
Barboza’s 2017 Immersion collection features illustrations of plant life printed with single-color hues of natural dye on cotton. The artist then adds textile fringes and weaves by stitching long threads into the illustrations, which often hang loosely, or are held up elegantly by a wooden rod.
Her Read the Landscape series merges landscape photography with textile art. One tactile piece features fragmented images of a lush jungle environment, that appears to have been overrun by colorful woven yarn. In another, thread from an embroidered lake emerges from the photo, as the viewer’s eye is lead to each of their yarn spools, attached to the gallery wall.
"Read the Landscape" series
"Read the Landscape" series
"Read the Landscape" series
"Read the Landscape" series
The
Increase series similarly explores the natural world with overflowing
textile fringes, flowing from embroidered tapestries. Each piece depicts
the movement of a plant’s shadow over the space of two weeks, with
balls of yarn gathered at the base, perhaps depicting the plant’s roots.
Barboza explains, “The embroidery in these pieces was made from
drawings made with the shadow of the plant for 15 days, visualizing its
growth and movement. The embroidery is growing and the tangles in the
pieces make evident the constant transformation of nature.”
"Increase" series
"Increase" series
