Enclosed Garden, Earth

Venice-based symbolist artist Santa GAÏA Pilens creates expansive textile murals that speak to the collective unconscious, weaving together fragments of folk traditions, prehistoric visual language, and contemporary thought. Her practice is rooted in the merging of cultures and historic timelines, yet always returns to a single guiding principle: constant transformation and constant oneness.

For Æquo, Gaïa presents her extended research into linen and shellac - the natural resin produced in India - through an intensive collaboration with embroiderers Sheikh Tajaher Kader and Mohmmad Aslam Shaikh in Mumbai. Pilens spent extended periods working alongside the atelier, allowing embroidery, material and gesture to enter directly into her practice. The resulting wall works are neither the translation of an artist’s drawing by an artisan nor the simple application of a technique. They emerge from a shared process, in which individual expertise progressively overlaps. Layers of shellac, fibre and embroidery build surfaces that hold the distinct languages of both artist and makers.