The exhibition Matassa, which reveals “textiles as forms of reinvention of the present,” opened on January 31st featuring 51 works by 34 artists. The exhibition is part of the Hypertextile project, which presents textiles as a language and device for thought, exploring artistic processes developed during residencies in Portugal (2024–2025).
Structured from the metaphor and concreteness of the matassa — a bundle of intertwined threads — the exhibition proposes a non-linear logic marked by overlaps, accumulations, and interdependencies among the participating artists. Between the artisanal and the technological, tradition and innovation enter into dialogue, foregrounding the processes, gestures, and decisions that shape each work.
Developed during his residency with Cortex Frontal in Mértola, A. Sebastianus’s installation Entangled Geologies reflects on memory, materiality, and the sedimentation of time. Using handspun cords made from cotton prints of his own photographs, the artist transforms image into tactile line, later knotting and netting them around stones gathered from the Guadiana River. Through gestures of binding and wrapping, the work approaches rope as memory, stone as body, and the river as witness. Rooted in his ongoing text Particles of From, the installation considers how materials — both living and inanimate — carry traces of human histories, spiritual resonance, and ancestral continuity within Mértola’s layered landscape of Islamic, Roman, and Christian civilizations.
Matassa is the result of the DGArtes Project Support Program, submitted by Cortex Frontal. Curated by Antónia Gaeta.