Ana makes pieces that go from wearable items to functional furniture, often as a result of collaborations.

year of birth: 1987

birthplace: Bogotá, Colombia

current residence: Brussels

started in 2015, after a master in textile design

Where did it all begin?

As a child I was already fascinated by textures. My father is a sculptor and I spent long hours in his atelier looking at him working or helping him, touching all kinds of different materials, shapes and colors.

The way material transforms itself was mesmerizing for me when I was young. I was amazed at how you can cut and transform it for different uses.

Ever since I was really young, I was interested in working with costumes and scenography for theater and performance. Growing up, costume design was not a common career, at least not in Barcelona were I lived, so I decided to study fashion design. What was exciting to me was to learn how to make patterns for clothes, and how textile can alter the volume of the body, sometimes in a very abstract way. I also learned how to apply this to contexts outside of the fashion world.

Afterwards I decided to study textile design. Textile is a very broad profession which I liked because it allowed me to work with textile in different contexts, based on an awareness of cultural and social worlds. Textile is a very malleable material. Depending on the fiber, it has a lot of properties and all kinds of applications. It is magical to start a process from one fiber and then transform the material.

Most beautiful moment during the creative process?

Working with artisans and making new collaborations.

What inspires you?

I am fascinated by the textile heritage of different cultures. From the beginning of society, textile has been a vehicle for communication, allowing us to express history, experiences and religions in different social contexts. It is very interesting to see how every culture appropriates textiles in a different way. Textile is a common language that we share, but the way we use it is very tightly connected to the culture, history and social circumstances of each place.

Favorite material?

I like all the natural fibers, depending on the  properties you are looking for, but I’m especially fascinated by alpaca wool. It’s called “the fiber of the gods”. It has a lot of amazing properties, one of them being thermoregulation.

When was your biggest moment of doubt?

I am always questioning myself.

Who is your biggest supporter?

I have a lot of big supporters, there’s my family, my working partner Veronique van Lierde who has been one of the biggest supporters of my career, the whole team from Belgium is Design, Heleen and Peter from Omarcity and all the great collaborators and buyers who believe in my work.

What is to you, the most beautiful sentence?

This beautiful quote describes the collaboration with an artisan so well:

“It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language which is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re- creation of that work.”

– Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and reflections (1968)

Where do you work?

I work in different places: in my atelier in Brussels and in the fascinating ateliers of the people with whom I collaborate.

Want to see more of Ana’s work?

Website

Instagram