PT
Margarida Reis (1933), was born in Vila Nova de Gaia, where she lives. Daughter of Margarida Dias Reis and Carlos José de Sousa Alves. She studied at the Artistic School of Soares dos Reis, in Porto, having specialized in the areas of weaving, tapestry and textile printing processes. She exhibits since 1986 with textile objects that challenge certain rules linked to tapestry and weaving, relating various technologies associated with needlework and knitting techniques. She was awarded a scholarship by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation between 1993 and 1995, a period of great production that led to her first individual exhibition “A Linguagem Amorosa dos Têxteis” at the Árvore Cooperative in Oporto in 1995. She has focused her artistic practice on textile materials, in particular silk, cotton and linen, exploring various associated traditional techniques. But one can also find in her work stones, metallic threads, crystal stones, tulle, gold and silver threads, seeds, flowers which she juxtaposes in unique ways.
It is from the balance between the sensitive and the intelligible world that the works of Margarida Reis are born. “Her experiences with the textile represent the landscape of affections and light in its multiple intersections and metamorphoses, surpassing the essence of matter itself”.
To the elements that make up nature – water – air – earth – fire, the essentials of life, memory, mythology and cosmology are added and the poem always intercedes for the weaving to emerge.
Matter submits to tactile knowledge but also moulds it, colour expresses emotions and creates imaginations.
Time, long and slow, is the structure that knits everything together (the fibres, the linen threads that make up warp and weft, the crystal stones) and makes the work happen without urgency. The rich texture of her works comes from the wise weaving of her hands.
Everything is serene in her work. Everything is restless in her thinking. And it is this interplay of forces that drives the mastery of her tapestries.
The works presented in this exhibition were made for the series “Escritas do Sol” (Sun Writings), a process of continuous work, in the studio, over twelve years. “Terra Adormecida” (Sleeping Earth), “Despertar” (Awakening) and “Bela, Veste-se de Malmequeres” (Beauty, Dressed in Marigolds) are presented as a cycle of life. They represent three states that unveil a germinative, metamortphic process. The seeds cast into the sleeping earth awaken through openings, through the causality of time. They recover from an anaesthetic state guided by the organised structure of the web and the weft to metamorphose into a delicate network, resulting in exaltation. Life happens.
According to the artist herself: Weaving is thus a word of creation.
ENG
Margarida Reis (1933), was born in Vila Nova de Gaia, where she lives. Daughter of Margarida Dias Reis and Carlos José de Sousa Alves. She studied at the Artistic School of Soares dos Reis, in Porto, having specialized in the areas of weaving, tapestry and textile printing processes. She exhibits since 1986 with textile objects that challenge certain rules linked to tapestry and weaving, relating various technologies associated with needlework and knitting techniques. She was awarded a scholarship by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation between 1993 and 1995, a period of great production that led to her first individual exhibition “A Linguagem Amorosa dos Têxteis” at the Árvore Cooperative in Oporto in 1995. She has focused her artistic practice on textile materials, in particular silk, cotton and linen, exploring various associated traditional techniques. But one can also find in her work stones, metallic threads, crystal stones, tulle, gold and silver threads, seeds, flowers which she juxtaposes in unique ways.
It is from the balance between the sensitive and the intelligible world that the works of Margarida Reis are born. “Her experiences with the textile represent the landscape of affections and light in its multiple intersections and metamorphoses, surpassing the essence of matter itself”.
To the elements that make up nature – water – air – earth – fire, the essentials of life, memory, mythology and cosmology are added and the poem always intercedes for the weaving to emerge.
Matter submits to tactile knowledge but also moulds it, colour expresses emotions and creates imaginations.
Time, long and slow, is the structure that knits everything together (the fibres, the linen threads that make up warp and weft, the crystal stones) and makes the work happen without urgency. The rich texture of her works comes from the wise weaving of her hands.
Everything is serene in her work. Everything is restless in her thinking. And it is this interplay of forces that drives the mastery of her tapestries.
The works presented in this exhibition were made for the series “Escritas do Sol” (Sun Writings), a process of continuous work, in the studio, over twelve years. “Terra Adormecida” (Sleeping Earth), “Despertar” (Awakening) and “Bela, Veste-se de Malmequeres” (Beauty, Dressed in Marigolds) are presented as a cycle of life. They represent three states that unveil a germinative, metamortphic process. The seeds cast into the sleeping earth awaken through openings, through the causality of time. They recover from an anaesthetic state guided by the organised structure of the web and the weft to metamorphose into a delicate network, resulting in exaltation. Life happens.
According to the artist herself: Weaving is thus a word of creation.
