The events we have lived through in recent years, the rapid development of artificial intelligence and the growing importance of virtuality challenge physical contact and may bring about a distancing from what we consider the ‘real’ world, certainly having the power to turn us into an increasingly individualistic and disengaged social fabric, ever more detached from socialising and from making in community.
This edition of CONTEXTILE proposes a reflection on Touch, considering it the first of all senses capable of repositioning us in relation to the world, from a perspective less centred on sight.
Cláudia Melo and Janis Jefferies
Casulo (Cocoon) is a textile sculpture whose essence embraces stories, hands and dialogues interwoven in the cultivation of organic cotton in Madeiral, São Vicente, Cape Verde, initiated by the Neve Insular collective together with the community. Derived from the tradition of the African loom, the sculpture incorporates copper wire alongside cotton hand-spun into the weft by the community of women of Tambacounda, Senegal, gaining malleability and taking the shape of a suspended womb-like space with a touch of magical protection. Woven by Cândida Rocha, Cape Verde, its volume resembles the forms of nature itself and the shelter of the Madeiral mountain. The name of the piece refers to the origin of the relationships in cotton cultivation, which grow from the cotton fibre in Cape Verde, a country where cotton was one of the pillars of the slave-based systems during Portuguese colonisation.