“From the Seas, From the Waters”
Paula Ramos

There is a certain consensus among scientists: we came from the sea. The ocean, which today covers 70% of the Earth's surface, appears to have offered a welcoming environment with favorable chemical conditions for the emergence and development of the first forms of life, at least 4 billion years ago. A continuous body of water enveloping the Earth, it is the origin and foundation of our existence, regulating the global climate, producing more than half of the oxygen we breathe, housing thousands of species, and providing food and employment to billions of people. Despite all this, we allow it to suffer, a victim of a perverse combination: greed, stupidity, and neglect.

Year after year, researchers warn about the effects of deep-sea mining, the predatory nature of overfishing, and the acidification of the waters; year after year, ocean surface temperatures break successive records, leading to the bleaching and death of coral reefs, the largest living structure on the planet; year after year, the number of animals killed by plastic ingestion, suffocation by bags, and entanglement in “ghost nets” — fishing nets lost or discarded at sea — continues to rise.

The work of Nara Guichon (Santa Maria, RS, 1955) arises, to a large extent, from this sense of perplexity, calling on us to reflect on the ways of life we have adopted and on the urgency of weaving new relationships with our home, the Earth. Her poetics, the result of sustained, resilient work with great formal and conceptual maturity, is also a manifesto that honors artisanal crafts and practices.

Living like a hermit in an ecological home on the southern coast of Florianópolis, the textile artist and environmentalist has the habit of walking along the beach every morning. It was in 1998, while observing debris carried in by the ocean currents, including fishing nets abandoned like garbage, that she decided to reclaim this material. The inspiration came during a visit to the studio of Henrique Schucman, who was beginning to incorporate discarded materials from the fishing industry into his tapestries. Excited by the idea, Nara decided to expand the initiative, exploring the possibilities of using polyamide nets.

Initially unpretentious, this decision opened up a disruptive and irreversible path. After all, she was known for using natural elements such as wool, cotton, seeds, and plant fibers. And suddenly, she was embracing one of the biggest culprits of environmental degradation — a material whose durability and damage remain immeasurable. “Is it a terrible material? Yes, when abandoned in the sea, polluting the oceans, killing millions of animals, and destroying our very life. But once this material exists in the world as ‘waste,’ why can’t we give it another direction, another use?”

Far beyond appropriation or recycling, what Nara does is transmutation. The process begins with collecting and cleaning the waste. Then comes the dyeing — using water, vinegar, and fire — with various natural agents: turmeric, yerba mate, barbatimão, onion skins, iron. A solitary and meticulous process of experimentation, preparing the nets can take months, and in this lies a significant part of the artist's remarkable immersion, as she restores vitality to what seemed dead and extracts from a few substances the surprising ochres, greens, rusts, and purples that color and illuminate her works. At the core of it all: the redemption of matter, giving a new destiny to what was discarded; the belief in traditional knowledge, exploring the possibilities of the alchemical cauldron; the deep connection with nature, which transforms the forest into a laboratory for her chromatic metamorphoses.

For at least 20 years, guided by principles of sustainability and socio-environmental ethics, Nara developed textiles for fashion and interior design. However, the realization that her products were rarely purchased with those values in mind gradually led to a sense of dissatisfaction. Between 2017 and 2018, with courage and detachment, she closed a successful chapter in the field of design and began devoting her time and skills to the weavings that beat, untamed, in her mind.

Free from commercial standards and outside judgment, she returned to a practice that had accompanied her since childhood and gave her conviction and stability to do what she does: knitting. With enormous needles and strips of netting in place of yarn, she unleashed a dizzying act of knitting. In no time, she was creating pieces two, three, even four meters long, marked by layers, colors, and scraps. From contemporary waste, she also collected discarded clothes, plastics, metals, and scrap materials. In this way, both matter and process expand our understanding of value, permanence, and care for the Earth — delivering a clear message: "It is time to awaken," as can be read in the appendix of one of her works.

More recently, exploring a sculptural dimension, Nara has been working with the wrapping of threads and the use of support structures such as wireframes, metals, and wood. The result is imposing pieces, some with an installation-like character, others resembling true spatial drawings — in an organic movement of lines, weights, and volumes.

In her intuitive enchantment, grounded in experience, Nara establishes dialogues that are at times harmonious, at times tense, between rough and soft surfaces, warm and cool colors, concave and convex curves, planes and prominences. And thus configurations overflow that resemble vines, nests, climbing plants, roots, archipelagos, aquatic organisms, annelids, anthozoans. Forms emerge that, in her innermost self, are processed with memory, fury, and poetry — just like the sea that regurgitates dead animals, trash, and fishing nets.

Nets are the raw material of Nara Guichon. More than ever, we live in networks — virtually connected — but only through real networks, embracing a commitment to connect with the planet, can we create a new future for ourselves. This is the artist’s cry, trying to remind us where we came from: from the seas, from the waters.