For your very first creation in carpet, what themes or ideas did you explore?My first works with carpets are a series of tufted cow skins out of wool, that are called Troqueles Vaca. I worked with them to talk about the cow skin that is used as a carpet in Argentina, and all the connotations that this has. Death, stepping on an animal’s skin, etc. On the contrary, the material that is used in making a wool carpet does not kill the animal, for me this is an important message. It was interesting for me this ambiguous concept, you can make a carpet that resembles the dead animal, with the hair of another animal that you don’t have to kill in the making.
At this time I had no struggles, I was working with not so many situations I had to think about like those that I have to think of right now when I work. It did feel lighter. The cow also talked about an icon, an animal that is very “Argentinian” but not native at all. I started to ask myself a lot of questions after this.
When I saw a video of your workshop, I felt that working by hand requires a considerable amount of time and labor. Please tell us more about your approach to carpet artwork, and the process involved in creation.Yes, working by hand takes time, not only in the making, but also in selecting the colours, planning, cutting, detailing. This is hard not only to make, but also to explain when making a project for an exhibition or working on a special commission. Textiles take time, and projects today sometimes need to be delivered fast.
Large projects imply study, drawing, solving technical difficulties, and always going through new challenges for each work. My work is all handmade so it is very hard to speed it up, and the world seems to go a bit fast asking for new work. One year is too short to work on a large-scale piece. Another challenge is weight and logistics, carpet works get very heavy and we have to move them, to finish them, roll them, and then transport them.
Nevertheless what I like the best is to make up new methods for working on each project, new ways of projecting the idea of the piece onto the textile.