Argentinean artist Alexandra Kehayoglou produces handmade wool rugs as unique works of art, with a hand-tufting process that takes several months to complete. Her powerful works merge traditional rug-making techniques with detailed site analysis, drone footage and photography. The artist takes inspirations from the landscape of her native Argentina—forests, desert islands, Patagonian glaciers, and the pastizales (grasslands) where the sheep from which the wool is sheared also graze.
One of her most recent pieces is Santa Cruz River, for NGV Triennial, which documents the proposed site of two major hydroelectricity dams on the Santa Cruz River in Argentina – the last free-flowing wild river in the country. The tapestry measures 10mx4.6m, mounted three meters up a wall and flow seven meters out onto the floor in the ground-floor space of the NGV. “People will be able to lie on it, walk on it, interact with it,” says Kehayoglou. It took two and half months to weave the carpet, but the project started a year ago with two visits to the river and two study carpets of the place.
The role of art for her, as she mentioned in an interview, is that it’s a tool or medium to put light on a reality; it is about communicating something that has the power to make a significant effect in the body and the way that we sense what surrounds us. Born in Buenos Aires in 1981, Kehayoglou has made a name for creating large textile sculpture. She recently also worked together with architecture design company MVRDV to create a theater’s interior for JUT Foundation, located at Taipei, Taiwan.
Previous article about Alexandra Kehayoglou’s work on Trendland here
