Portable Shrines

What is your vision of textile futures?
I believe that the future of textiles is about poetic interaction and communication between humans. Textiles is a means to display emotion and beliefs in a subtle, non-verbal form. Textiles is a tool to make visible what was invisible.

What is your project about?
Interaction, performance and the way we, Catholics, relate to our traditional rituals. The project proposes new experiences for believers in the 21st century. It is inspired by the traditional ritualistic performance around shrines developed by mothers and grandmothers in Latin American Catholic homes. Bringing tradition into the present and future religious practices. I propose portable shrines with prayers in the form of tattoos; amulets to hide under dresses and shrine-tech bags.

What inspires you?
The experience of being a believer at a non-believers’ time, the aesthetics and rituals of Catholic religion in Latin America, childhood memories, my grandmother’s devoted belief, religious art, aesthetics of subtlety, romantic imagery, spirituality, faith.


Why are you doing this project? What does it mean to you?
“Something to believe in” grew out of my personal interest in non-verbal communication. Religion is a powerful catalyst of emotions and a source of communication. This project is directly linked to my personal perception of religion, and how I imagine religious rituals to enhance Catholic experience.

What is ‘future’ about it?
My project aims to enhance the religious experience by reviving the performance aspects of religious experience which are built around textiles. I use basic electronics to develop a greater interaction between the Catholic believer and the religious object, in this case the portable shrine.

Which materials and technologies have you used?
Natural and traditional fabrics such as cottons and silks, vintage objects such as Victorian purse frames in combination with fibre optics, electroluminescent (EL) wires, light-emitting components (LEDs), miniature speakers.

Carolina Agudelo
Carolina received her BA in Textiles at University of Los Andes in 2001 in her native Colombia. She then worked as a Tutor and Researcher in the university’s School of Design until 2004 when she joined the MA Design for Textile Futures at Central Saint Martins College. Carolina is interested in aesthetics in relation to Latin American culture. She is also interested in the way technology and textiles could bring the users more emotive experiences and a new subtle form of communication, all related with interaction and experiential design.

Acknowledgements:
Thanks to God, my family and University of Los Andes (Bogotá – Colombia).