Maria Francisca Vidal Vergara

The work that I am developing revolves around the question of "how we are constituted inside" and the notion or appropriation of the material idea of ourselves. As human beings, we connect with each other and with the physical reality that surrounds us, through our body. We feel the rest of things thanks to the organ of the skin, which envelops almost our entirety, allowing us to experience that other that surrounds us. After having investigated the skin as a complex material layer in my Dissertation MA, linking its incredible properties of perception with art, in this last stage I wanted to direct my gaze inwards, towards the inside of our own human body. Using the textile as a physical way of expressing my ideas, I begin to immerse myself in my own body perception, visiting artistic, religious and scientific exhibitions that provide me with images from other points of view of what shapes us. One of them, with images obtained thanks to microscopic technology, contributes to my textile work the "division" of a whole in multiple layers, designing a textile organ capable of being travelled through from the outside inwards. The experiences of those inner holes coming from the sum of layers are transformed into the vision of my own interior landscapes, which one by one and discreetly is revealed to the eye and the hand. The textile work I do is aimed at bonding with the observer, incorporating tactile and luminous sensors into my designs that make it possible for those who observe and interact with my work to also approach it from another point of view. The multi-sensoriality and the awakening of the curiosity that prompts questioning, is for me, something fundamental and that I hope my work will trigger in those who observe it and feel it.