Fibre artist Ana Teresa Barboza creates three-dimensional fibre art that spills out of the canvas and into the gallery space. The Peruvian textile artist studied painting at the Catholic University of Peru. This traditional education focused heavily on the formal aspects of fine art; line, colour and composition. Barboza combines these technical skills with various textile techniques: embroidery, weaving, quilting, applique and crochet to name just a few.

Tracking the Movement of Plants with Embroidery

In some of her recent works, Ana Teresa Barboza tracks the movement of plants with a time-based embroidery. She begins by projecting light onto plants in her studio, casting shadows onto a wall behind them. The artist traces these shadows each day, recording the movement and growth of the plants.

The drawings are then turned into brightly coloured embroideries that log the plant’s activity for 15 days. The embroidered pieces show different coloured sections for each day of the plant’s growth. Day one, for example, might be shown in red, day two in green and so forth.

Barboza has finished the work by leaving the spool of thread attached to the canvas. This hints at the continuation of the plant’s stories beyond the artwork, where they continue to move and grow.

‘I read a book titled “The Secret Life of Plants” where the author talks about how plants have a way of perceiving their surroundings and how they can actually move like man, just in a slower manner. It was there and then that I started relating plants to humankind’.

Botanically Dyed Fibres

In other botanically inspired works, Barboza explores the natural dying properties of the plants she depicts. ‘Immersion’ is a series of painted botanical wall hangings from which delicate fringes of yarn are extended. These threads are elegantly balanced or suspended on a supporting wooden rod.

In ‘Landscape of the Indigo’, the artist explores the Taiwanese cultural inheritance of indigo dying with the native plant Chinese Rain Bell. The wall hanging represents the process of indigo dying, whilst also being a product of that process.

Boundaries of the Embroidery Hoop

In the works mentioned above, the yarn extending from the work is deliberate and graceful whereas in her series ‘Suspension’ the yarn has a life of its own. Organic matter tumbles from embroidery hoops in tendrils of knotted and knitted yarn. That is to say, the yarn crosses the boundaries of the imagined space into the space of the viewer.

The idea of crossing boundaries continues into other works too. In her 2010 series people seem to cross borders into other realities, finding themselves amongst wild roaming animals and dense tropical foliage. In one such embroidery, a man dressed in a suit seems to have accidentally wandered into the jungle on the commute home from the office. A flock of birds, cheetas and reptiles swarm on him and feast on his body. The second embroidery in the series shows a woman stitching up the same man’s wounds. To conclude the sequence, a third embroidery depicts the woman sewing him into a bearskin, making him one with the nature around him.

Confines of the Skin

In other works, Ana Teresa Barboza combines embroidery with photography and illustration. One such series focuses on women who seem uncomfortable in their own skin. The nude figures pull at their flesh or stitch floral motifs into their body. One woman tears at her chest revealing cross stitch lungs while another plucks brightly embroidered feathers from her legs. In these pieces, it is as if the women depicted are trapped by the confines of their own skin. In this way, these embroideries speak of boundaries and confines similarly to her previous works.

Throughout all of her fibre art, Barboza employs an imaginative combination of materials to create contrast or ‘tension’ between her subjects. Whether its photography combined with embroidery or pencil drawing with cross stitch, Barboza continues to push the boundaries of fibre art.

To explore more of Ana Teresa Barboza’s artwork head over to her website here.