Paper short abstract:

Olly, a German-Brazilian artist, wove her career by incorporating the environment into her work. The alterity of people and things was transformed into themes, colors and textures, creating a world of her own, as part of a new social class that stood out from the produced and consumed things

Paper long abstract:

Olly was born in 1914 in Mittweida, Germany. Until the end of the twentieth century, Mittweida was relatively important due to the textile production with mechanical looms. In 1936, she moved to Brazil and, in 1950, began an artistic career, having weaving as her main technique. Ingold uses weaving as a metaphor to elaborate an ecology of life which assumes that skills are neither innate nor acquired but cultivated, incorporated into the human organism through practice and training in the environment. In order to understand Olly's skills, it is necessary to understand the socio-technical meshes to which she belonged. Participation in the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro art studios was a way of putting her body (and mind) in contact with artistic materials and techniques that allowed a new relationship with her surroundings. Acquiring artistic skills widened her horizons, including in her perception things that were previously unnoticed. Her collections of pre-Columbian pottery, indigenous things, string literature, among others, were a way of incorporating these experiences into her creations. Likewise, photographing a manhole in the middle of the street to use as a theme in her works was a way to incorporate the city into her work, maps incorporated the world in it. It is about this process of weaving her world, incorporating alterity as theme, color and texture that this communication intends to elaborate.