Julia Pimenta is a visual artist from São Paulo, where she still lives today. Specializing in the use of the heddle loom, she uses nature as the guiding thread of her works, capturing textures, shapes and details that refer to the natural environment. Her work is an invitation to connect with these fragments of landscapes, allowing the imagination to take the viewer to the places where the inspiration comes from.
Her admiration for tapestry emerged in 2020, when she had her first contact with the technique. In 2024, she decided to expand her work, debuting in the visual arts with her first exhibition, a milestone in her career. Seeking to reconnect craftsmanship with art, Julia rescues the status of tapestry as an expressive language, highlighting in practice the creative freedom that weaving proposes and subverting the functional aspect historically attributed to it.
What themes do you prefer to explore in your works?
Contemporary art has increasingly explored the intersection between different areas of knowledge, and in my case, it is no different. My quest to re-signify natural landscapes and textures within tapestries is a way of making two distinct worlds dialogue.
I had a childhood marked by outdoor experiences and I have always been enchanted by the colors and textures created naturally — the result of chance and the ability of different organisms to come together, forming surprising landscapes, shapes and details. This has always fascinated me, and it is exactly what I seek to explore in my works: this interconnection and interaction between different elements, which can also be interpreted as a metaphor for interdependence and collectivity in our own lives.
What is your creative process like?
I always carry my camera as an extension of my gaze, ready to capture the small details that chance offers me along the way. A moss spreading over a rock, an irregular spot on a leaf, the delicate design on a butterfly’s wing — fragments of nature that, under my lens, transform into textures that are almost invisible to the naked eye. At the moment of the click, I freeze the present, magnifying what could otherwise go unnoticed.
Then, another process begins: I exchange the lens for intuition and translate these images into threads, colors and textures. At this moment, I also let intuition guide me. Without any major projects or previous drawings, just the reference of what that click — or, often, my memory — gave me. It would almost be petulant to try to reproduce something that created itself, something that nature made. But it is inevitable not to let oneself be enveloped by the power of what it offers us.
What is the role of the artist in today's society?
I believe that all artists, or at least most artists, act as great observers and questioners of society, proposing new perspectives on the world and for the world. As catalysts for reflection and references, artists can use their creative and poetic freedom to provoke dialogue, challenge the status quo, bring new points of view and raise awareness among the public about topics of common interest.
In addition to aesthetic creation and entertainment, artists play an essential role in redefining things. In my case, for example, there is a redefinition of ancestral and artisanal practices within contemporary art. But, of course, art is also a space for escape and contemplation, allowing the artist to evoke emotions in their visual narratives and offer a necessary respite in today's world.
