Creator profile
Folded Signal Study, 2025
Visual artist
Mara Kade
Suspends folded textile forms that behave like both notation and body memory.
- Based in
- Oslo
- School
- Western Academy of Beijing
- Disciplines
- Visual Artist · Designer
Mara Kade is an Oslo-based textile sculptor building suspended forms from folded fabric, dyed seams, and soft engineered tension.
Curatorial pathways
Collections
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Suspended Material Forms
Forms held by tension, reflection, and material restraint rather than by narrative excess.
2 linked worksOpen collection
About
Statement and biography
My studio practice treats cloth as both structure and trace. I am interested in the point where fabric stops behaving like support and begins behaving like notation: a fold can feel like choreography, engineering, or restraint depending on how tension is distributed. The work develops through repeated draping, pinning, dye testing, and suspension studies, usually with the scale adjusted only after the piece can hold itself convincingly. Softness matters to me, but only when it is paired with precision. I want the sculpture to feel provisional without seeming careless, and measured without losing the sensation of touch. The forms often suggest ribbon, bone, or signal, but I am less interested in naming them than in letting them hover between body reference and constructed object.
Process
How the work is made
Mara’s process depends on mock suspension rigs, dyed seam tests, and small-scale fold studies before a final form is held in air.
Folded Signal Study
Developed through draping trials and suspension tests until the form could hold tension without becoming rigid.