Dilalica, Barcelona
Chloé Vanderstraeten & Huaqian Zhang
Drawing and textile are the main languages of artists Chloé Vanderstraeten and Huaqian Zhang. They both develop their practices through close attention to the body and its processes, using scale, materials, and structure to rethink the relationship between the technical and the sensitive.
Chloé Vanderstraeten approaches drawing as a tool to register bodily experiences such as breathing, sleeping, or listening. Inspired by historical scientific diagrams and by the idea of the body as architecture, she expands drawing into volume through cuts, folds, and assemblies of paper. Her works are conceived as physical cartographies, often on a large scale, where gesture and bodily movement are integrated into the construction of the piece itself.
Huaqian Zhang works through a transdisciplinary practice that combines design, writing, electronics, and textiles. In recent works, they have started from microscopic images of bodily fluids (sweat, saliva, blood, tears, discharge) to generate patterns knitted with modified Jacquard machines. Their practice moves between the digital and the material, the technical and the affective, connecting microscopic and architectural scales.
The booth at Art-o-rama brings these practices into dialogue through a selection of textile pieces and sculptural drawings that unfold across surfaces and scales — sensitive structures in which bodies and materials fold, transform, and relate.
