Carmen Castañeda, the artist who sews her works by hand

  • By:karen-millen

27

10/2022

The typical domestic sewing machine is capable of making up to 1.000 stitches per minute, and industrial models can make up to 5.000 or more.This technology has its great advantages: we are almost 8.000 million inhabitants on Earth, and we want varied, attractive, and affordable clothes, which would not be possible if we sewed everything by hand.But the triumph of these new methods implies the decline of others, and most of us rarely realize what is being lost.

Carmen Castañeda does consider it, and a lot.The Madrid artist also works with thread, stitches and fabrics, but her production methods have little in common with those of the big brands.It does not produce clothes, to start, but sew directly on flat surfaces.And it is that the speed at which it works is to the sewing machine what a match is to the microwave: it slowly sews, carefully, paying attention to each stitch it does, all by hand.

His piece study of a square 2.0 use about 17.500 tubes, 11.000 sequins, 1.300 meters of cotton thread, and took, for its own estimate, about 150 hours to perform it;The final product measures a little less than a square meter.But the fact that doing so at hand can take much more is not for her a disadvantage, but a source of opportunity and reflection that resides in the heart of her work.

"The beautiful thing is to create through the gesture, and carry fragile materials and sensitive to a state of art work," says Castañeda.“There is a lot of magic and meditation processes in the work itself."

Castañeda was born in Madrid in 1985, and, except for a season in Paris, he has always lived in the capital.She is an educated and friendly woman, but extremely serious about her work, which addresses with an almost monastic devotion.

He studied Fine Arts at the European University of Madrid, where he worked mainly with painting and watch.It was in Paris, while attending a course in École Lesage, where he knew the seam and art of knitting, specifically the most arcane techniques such as vermicelle, replisssage, chain, grain point, or passé-placat.

For their classmates in Lesage, mostly fashion designers, these techniques were means for an end, useful only to the extent that they could apply to clothes.Castañeda looked beyond his typical uses as haute couture techniques and stood in his potential as an art form.

“Me crucé por casualidad con las técnicas de bordado de Alta Costura y empecé a estudiarlas de una manera inocente," explica.“When I started deepening them, I was impressed that they were such pictorial techniques, that the gesture was so expressive and intimate.I saw the need to explore these techniques outside the context, remove the ornamental and figurative element and give importance to the gesture, its imperfection and the materials;to its beauty by themselves."

Carmen Castañeda, la artista que cose sus obras a mano

The most effective way to emphasize this beauty was, for her, to separate the techniques of the world of clothing, where only one element is left between several, and isolate them on a canvas.It is a thread that would continue to this day.

There is a lot of magic and meditation processes in the work itself

Although sometimes relegated in the world of contemporary art, textile art really has millenary roots.Intact pieces have been found that date the ancient Greeks, and the medieval nobility liked to decorate their palaces with vividly detailed tapestries.

In the twentieth century artists such as Anni Albers or Jean Lurçat became known for their experiments with abstractions with textiles;Today the American octogenarian artist Shiela Hicks is distinguished by the large and colorful pieces of her that sometimes occupy whole rooms.

As an art form, textile art exists at the intersection of drawing and sculpture;It is highly visual, but the artist can play with elements such as weights or texture to contribute new dimensions to the piece.

Castañeda takes advantage of these possibilities in his own works, although he focuses more on the process itself than on the visual result.Sometimes, at the beginning of a piece, he does not know how it will be in the end.

“Sólo decido el tamaño de la pieza," afirma."Do not draw on the canvas or sketch.Then I let myself be carried away by the material and the movement of technique and gesture."

His threads sometimes sprout out and up the canvas as living organisms, in apparent challenge of gravity.The result can adopt the appearance of a map, suggesting both history and growth.

His mantle I piece uses his grandmother's somier as a frame, on which more than 4 has woven by hand.000 natural petals of preserved flowers.As time the petals will change and the mantle will grow in each exhibition.

Its passage series shows a monochromatic composition in three phases of development, made with mouliné cotton, hand-sewn on plant paper through the Passé-Plat technique.The four pieces meant in total 192 hours of work, the same as almost 40 trips from Madrid to Barcelona on the bird, round trip.

His work is less a criticism of the fashion industry than an exploration of the possibilities that are unnoticed when techniques and materials are treated as a mere pabulus for mass production.However, the act of spending almost 200 hours regularly sewing cotton has an implicit criticism of current production methods.

High sewing techniques

Its 'passage' series consists of four pieces that took about 192 hours to sew

This criticism, and a claim of the traditional methods that industrial production replaced, is the unifying theme of Xtant, an artisan textile festival in which Castañeda and about 50 more artists, from more than 20 countries, joined to exchange ideas,Give workshops, and show their works.This year the festival was held in Palma de Mallorca, with events at the Can Balaguer gallery and a handmade market in the Museum's courtyard is Baluard.

“Los Homo sapiens aprendimos a coser antes que a escribir," declaran los organizadores de XTANT, en su página web.“One of the most important problems in the fashion world is its disconnection of textiles, specifically Textiles of Heritage.It is equivalent to being a chef without understanding the ingredients of a recipe."

As a remedy, Xtant aims to promote the collecting of heritage textiles as contemporary art.

In Xtant, Castañeda gave a workshop on the application of Kintsugi to textiles.Kintsugi is Japanese art to fix broken objects in such a way that imperfections are accentuated and embellished instead of hiding them.It is typically associated with ceramics;If a bowl breaks, it is fixed with a lacquer mixed with gold, silver, or platinum.Fractures are treated as nothing more than a chapter in the history of the object, capable of giving it even more beautiful than before.(According to the legend, when it was introduced centuries for the first time in Japan, it became so popular among collectors who began to break her pottery and then repair it according to the Kintsugi method.) In his workshop in Xtant, Castañeda will sew damaged textiles with golden threads and sequins.

“La técnica de kintsugi no es tan literal formalmente en mi trabajo, es en el concepto y la estética donde se visualizan referencias japonesas; la búsqueda de la belleza con lo mínimo y la búsqueda del interior," cuenta la artista madrileña.

The Xtant Festival has given impulse to traditional Japanese techniques such as Kintsugi, thanks to the bet of brands such as Shiseido, the cosmetics and makeup firm founded in 1872 in the Japanese country.Shiseido also pours Japanese ancestral wisdom in the elaboration of its products with the use, for example, of amei, the grass of the longevity used by the monks for centuries, or a kintsugi kit for the repair of broken balls.

“Lejos de esconder nuestras imperfecciones, desde Shiseido queremos invitar a ensalzar con oro las grietas que forman parte de la vida y de cada historia, las cuales nos hacen únicos e irrepetibles," sostiene Ainhara Viñarás, directora general de Shiseido España.The Japanese Cosmetic brand opened the oldest active active art gallery in Japan, in Tokyo in 1919 and since then has mounted more than 3.000 exhibitions, like Xtant in Mallorca.

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Carmen Castañeda has planned to follow her experiments from her study in Madrid, which operates under the anonymous name by cm.Just before the quarantine had a personal exhibition in the Madrid maternal gallery and inheritance, and will have others in Barcelona and Paris throughout the next year.

Meanwhile, he will continue to develop his work, one stitch at the same time.

“La belleza y la poética están en el proceso, el gesto repetido en medio del silencio del lienzo, la propia imperfección del gesto que cobra una identidad propia," concluye.“These are processes that lead you to a state of contemplation and reflection, experimentation and study of tradition."

Carmen Castañeda, the artist who sews her works by hand
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