Angelita Alves

For twenty years, Angelita Alves designed buildings alongside Bernard Tschumi and Norman Foster. Then she left architecture for art. Born in Brazil, with European, African, and Indigenous roots, she trained at the Royal College of Art in London and at Columbia University, and she learned to weave and knot from her father. That craft is now the heart of her work.

Nest Chair - Paper rush, rebar frame, 2023

Emaranhamento Chairs - Cotton rope, found chair, 2025

The chair comes up again and again in her work. A single chair stands for one person and their own history. Several chairs knotted together stand for relationships: family, dependence, and the ways people support and limit each other. She works slowly, by hand. As she says, “threads become maps of migration, and knots become repositories of memory.”

Tres Graças 1 - Flax, rope, 2026

Alves has lived in North and South America, the Middle East, and Europe, and migration is behind almost everything she makes. She still thinks like an architect about structure and space, even though textiles are softer and more physical. She also gives worn, everyday objects a second life, turning old things into something worth keeping.