Carola Cantini (ARG)

Artist in Residence at Nieuw en Meer from 01-01-2015 till 31-03-2015.
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I am an argentinean designer that travelled to Amsterdam to make the Artist in Residence programme at Nieuw en Meer for three months.The piece I made was aproximately 5 meter long and 2 meters wide cotton ropes & wood structure delicately weaved with naturally dyed cotton fibers, shaped as a giant tropical leaf . This leaf is the result of experimenting before with the ancient concept of weaving with organic & sustainable materials & methods. The materials I used were around 130 sticks of raw wood , 300 meters of cotton ropes , cotton fibers & natural dyes.

The process of building the leaf was divided in three stages:

  1. LOOM – Wood: Curving edges , sanding , cutting and painting of the around 130 sticks of diferent types of wood from the 12th of December until 16th of January .
  2. STRUCTURE – Cotton ropes: Weaving up with knots all the wood together with the 300 meters of cotton rope from the 16th of January until 10th of February
  3. WEAVING – Cotton fibers: separation of the cotton fibers and colouring with natural dyes ( carrots tops, onion peels, kurkuma & spinach ) from the 8th until the 16th of february . Weaving of the coloured cotton threads into the wood & rope structure was from the 16th until the 28th of February.

From the 1st till the 8th of March I was working on the hanging of the piece at the dome. The process of building the leaf lasted almost 3 months – around 700 hours of work from the 12 of December 2014 and 8th of March of 2015. You can see the whole proccess videos & pictures at www.cargocollective.com/carolacantini/A-YELLOW-POINT

Pictures & Videos by Martin Bollati
Visuals by Pablo Dias

 Carola Cantini copia