Venezuelan artist Rosanna Rios Perez brings together katazome, a stencil-resist dyeing technique, and yūzen, a paste-resist method used for kimono decoration, in works that move fluidly between installation, textiles, and drawing. Her practice explores ritual and the sacred while reflecting on the transience of human existence and our enduring impact on the natural world. In her embroidered Hilvanando Nostalgias series, she threads together memory, belonging, and the idea of “home,” not as a fixed location but as something carried within the body. In another series she turns to a rice-paste resist technique using her own body to create forms on cloth. Her work is also informed by the ancient burial rites performed by the Wayuu people of northern Colombia and Venezuela. Across her practice, material, identity, and place are drawn into quiet dialogue, carrying traces of Venezuela’s rainforests into the intimate ritual spaces of Kyoto’s tea rooms.
JT: Venezuela to Kyoto is by no means a small journey. How did immersing yourself in this quite different environment shape your practice?
RR: Japan was a big change for me, not only personally but also redefining my work as a whole. Living in Kyoto, surrounded by traditional crafts and stores that are dedicated to selling craft tools, the nori paste used as a dye-resist, or brushes used in katazome, made me understand just how alive craft still is in Japan, even as the traditional dyeing workshops have been disappearing.
With so many places to study textile arts in Japan, what drew you to Kyoto?
Through the MEXT scholarship I had offers from a professor in Kanazawa and from Professor Agano Machiko at Kyoto Seika University. I was drawn to Kyoto for two reasons: its deep tradition of dyeing, kyo-yūzen and katazome especially, and the fact that my research at the time was rooted in Genji Monogatari (The Tale of Genji).
Once inside the kōbō (studio), the real learning unfolded in unexpected ways. The atmosphere at Seika felt like a collaborative space where we all supported each other. I received a lot of help in the beginning because of the language barrier. Using the mushi-gi steamer was daunting. I thought I could blow up the school if I didn’t use it correctly, but with time and generous support from my peers I managed to become independent around the studio. Professor Agano was pivotal in pushing the boundaries of traditional dyeing practice. She always encouraged me to go beyond myself, and her firm belief in my work gave me confidence. Altogether, I spent eight years at Kyoto Seika University, 2014-2022, as a research, master’s, and PhD student.
How did you find living in Kyoto?
Kyoto is multifaceted. At first, I lived close to my university, in Iwakura, which is very quiet and isolated from the city centre, away from the bustling tourist spots. It’s the perfect place if you want to concentrate on your studies, and it is also very beautiful. After a few years, I moved near the Nishijin area, close to Nijō Castle. I could sense the strong community ties that have long existed in Kyoto around this area. The machiya, temples, and craft shops within Nishijin are timeless and fascinating.
Your work engages deeply with indigenous ritual. Your video installation, Second Burial ‘Anajawaa’ (2018) depicts a Wayuu Second Burial. Can you tell us about that practice and what drew you to it?
The ritual takes place around seven years after a family member has passed away and been buried (the first burial). This ritual can take days: family members gather in procession to take the remains of the deceased to Cabo de la Vela, a place Wayuu consider holy. They believe the souls of their ancestors gather here before continuing on to Jepirra, the sacred place where all souls finally rest.
I came to the Wayuu not through ancestry but through friendship—a woman who shared with me their ways of living and thinking. For Wayuu, women play a central role: they pass on cultural knowledge to their descendants, and because the community is matrilineal, they also carry the family line. Amongst their responsibilities is the Second Burial.
The piece Canaima (2019) addresses the environmental devastation of Venezuela’s Amazon region. How did the Japanese techniques find their way into that work?
In Canaima, I use dyeing techniques I learned in Kyoto and nori paste. By smearing it on my own body, I create a negative impression of myself on the surface of the fabric. On this occasion, I applied gold leaf after dyeing to enhance the pattern.
The title refers to Canaima National Park in Venezuela, located in the Amazon, a vast rainforest area and home to the Pemon community, which is facing one of the biggest threats to its ecosystem: gold mining. This has eroded large areas of land, poisoned rivers with mercury, and taken the lives of Pemon people, as well as many other communities and the wildlife that inhabit the region. Little to no action has been taken, even as we experience worldwide climate change as a result of human activity.
The use of your own body as a resist tool is both radical and intimate, with flesh becoming both instrument and subject. Do you still work with that technique, or has it evolved into another form?
Sometimes I still use this tool. Fabric feels deeply connected to human experience. From the moment we are born, we are wrapped in cloth, so the relationship between fabric and the skin begins with some of our earliest tactile memories. Our hands are also constantly in contact with the materials of everyday life and in that contact we inevitably leave something of ourselves behind. This technique reflects who I am at the moment of creation. In that sense, it becomes a kind of signature. It is also a reminder that our lives are brief and always changing. These materials record the passage of time and may outlive us, yet they too will eventually weather, erode, and fade.
Memento Mori was shown that same year for the 2019 Setouchi Triennale in an abandoned house on a depopulated island. How did that environment shape the work?
It was an interesting project, involving collaboration with the local people, to set up the exhibition space in abandoned houses. When I participated in the project, 25 people lived on Takamijima; there may be fewer inhabitants now. The place is otherworldly—you can sense how the declining population has been overwhelmed by the landscape, where plants are taking over. I decided to work with the idea of memento mori, to bring out memories that still felt present in the house I selected to display my work. On the first floor of the house, a silhouette, reminiscent of the people who had lived in that space, emerged faintly in the dark, highlighted by a UV blacklight. Upstairs, cut paper, illuminated by natural light from outside, created a mysterious visual effect. I wanted viewers to feel those traces of the past too and to find their own memories inside that space.
In 2021 you collaborated with Samuel Andre on Kami-mu (上無) at Suzu House in Kyoto. That work seems to engage with ideas of sound, ritual, and the sacred in a very direct way. How did that collaboration develop?
This installation was in a space used for tea ceremony and depicts an offering of twelve plates in succession, relating to the twelve notes of the ancient chromatic scales in Buddhist practice. The work created an atmosphere of meditation by incorporating the sounds of suzu bells and orin chanting bowls—ritual implements that Samuel, a long-time resident of Japan, has researched deeply.
Embroidery on leaf plates was an offering in remembrance of the souls that left us during the pandemic. It became a way to reconnect to all the people who were no longer with us and to understand the frail boundary between life and death. The twelve plates were an invitation to pause and reconnect with that center within us that Romanian philosopher Mircea Eliade referred to as the Axis Mundi, the center of the world.
We held a performance during the exhibition where the orin sounds established a dialogue with the strum of the berimbau, an instrument used in capoeira. Samuel described the pure sounds emitted by the chanting bowls as coming into perfect balance with the earthy sounds of the berimbau. For the occasion, artist Ueda Mai participated as an activator of the ritual space.
In contrast with the expansive, communal energy of Kami-mu, Entraña from the Hilvanando Nostalgias series feels like a shift inward. Can you tell us about that?
In Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space, he conceives of the family home as the place we revisit in our deepest reveries; it is our dream nucleus tied to a sense of belonging. Eight years went by before I could return to my family home in Venezuela and realize what had been lost and would never return. I felt a need for reconstruction following this sense of loss. It began unfolding in collage form, created with small pieces of paper I have collected for over twenty years. I stitched those fragments together into something that brought back the feeling of that home, that family nest, and of my mother, who had passed away during the outbreak of COVID-19. She taught me to embroider fabric as a child, to feel the stitch that binds the family home. Embroidery is a way to return to that safe place, the reverie of a dream space. Although I cannot return to my mother’s touch, through the stitching, I find my way back to something that exists beyond time and place, a world I can only reach with my hands.
What do you find yourself returning to, in your mind, when you think of Kyoto after several years of distance?
Kyoto is a place that invites contemplation and self-awareness, and I do not mean that in a touristy, brochure-advertisement sense. While I was living there, I encountered many different versions of the city, but the Kyoto I remember most vividly emerged through ordinary moments, such as riding my bicycle or walking to the train station. One day, I saw an elderly woman placing a small box of beautiful, dyed fabric scraps outside her house. She told me I could take them for free, and I immediately understood what a treasure she was offering me. I still have these scraps. The quiet, everyday Kyoto that revealed itself through chance encounters and small acts of generosity is the one I would like to return to.
Dr. Rosanna Rios is a Venezuelan visual artist whose practice centers on textiles but encompasses video installation, embroidery, drawing, and sound. Her work explores the relevance of craft traditions within contemporary art and their potential for creative placemaking. She has exhibited at the VI Biennial of Contemporary Textile Art AIR at the Museo Anahuacalli (Mexico), Textile Art of Today at the Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum (Slovakia), the Setouchi Triennale (Japan), and Interlacing of Continents Salon at Miami International Fine Arts (USA).
Learn more about her work at https://linktr.ee/rosannarios and on Instagram at @rosannarios_art
