Text: Filipa Oliveira

The Dutch artist Tanja Smeets creates large-scale installations using textiles and other media, which grow like mushrooms or mycelium across ceilings, walls and floors. These installations reflect her ongoing research into the growth processes of different plant species and her strong will to test the limits and possibilities of her chosen materials. At Vapor Buxeda Vell, her work weaves itself into the visually and historically charged site in increasingly detailed layers, interlacing different epochs and histories. It does so to such an extent that it becomes difficult to distinguish between her work and the venue’s skin. Knotted with the memory of the textile industry that the venue represents and of Sabadell as an industrial hub, Inside the Blooming Surface radically expands our understanding of what textiles can be and do.

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