Textile
by Olaf Holzapfel

For more than a decade, works of art made from plant material have been at the center of Olaf Holzapfel’s artistic practice. Since 2009, Holzapfel has been developing a group of works together with weavers from a Wichí family in Gran Chaco, Argentina. His works highlight the connection between humans as settlers and their surrounding landscape and emphasize the relationship between center and periphery, urban and rural. An example of this are the textile works and installations made from the cactus fibre Chaguar and presented in the publication Textile. These textile works were made in a collaborative process between the artist and the Wichí weavers Teresa, Mirta, Dionisia, Noelia, and Luisa Gutiérrez. In their beauty, the works combine contemporary aesthetics with the weavers’ knowledge of the colors and properties of the forest.
The publication contains documentational material of Holtzapfel’s work, texts by Olaf Holzapfel, Andrea Elías, and Inka Gressel as well as an interview with the Wichí weavers.