In the studio: Ana Rita de Albuquerque

Text: Miguel Barbot
Photographs: Miguel Barbot e Alice Bernardo

Our visit to Ana Rita de Albuquerque's studio in Central Portugal was long due. Finally, it happened at the beginning of a hot August after a hectic period. It was work but tasted like a deserved vacation that included long hikes and river swimming.

Ana Rita is a regular on the Saber Fazer workshops calendar. Our collaboration and friendship are getting stronger every year.

Ana Rita describes her work as "a "quantic capacitor" of wool history. It starts with this excellent material, older than Humankind and ends with physical and sensory computing. I wonder if these metaphors make any sense in English but are pretty understandable in the original Portuguese.

She tells a story in a unique language among an organized and programmed entanglement of wearable technology and felted wool fibres. It's a sort of organic abstraction where the artist explores the shape and sculpture as sensorial vehicles. Felt like a contemporary and expressive media, with permanent magical, renewable and reactive plasticity. Her words.

There is no better place to tell this story than Carregal do Sal. A village seated on a hilltop with a fantastic backdrop: the ever-present mountains, which seem simultaneously close and far away. 

The studio is in the middle of a pine forest, detached from the village and the light here is magical. It is a big, open-plan, but very intimal house, with projects and artworks everywhere.

The house is Ana Rita's archive, storing experiences, memories, client's work and the many pieces that are her work-in-progress. We were particularly intrigued by some of Ana Rita's dearest objects, resulting from commissions from which she made 'twins' to archive, like the "New Utero."

Visiting the studio is like having a story told, work by work, piece by piece. Chaotic at first sight but notoriously coherent when one pays close attention. There is evident visual maturity, and mastering the felting technique is remarkable even in Ana Rita's early works.

In the next few weeks, I will update the journal to show the result of Oficio's collaboration with the artist. In addition, we have some of the "Pele do Lobo / The Wolf Skin" rugs available. Ana Rita made the rugs from single fleeces of Churra Mirandesa, a Portuguese native sheep breed in white and brown. Later, we will write about another project in a different post. Ana Rita commissioned our design studio to create a new identity and website and organise her online catalogue. Quite a challenge.

For inquiries, please email me at miguel@ooficio.com