Laura: Immersing myself in another culture brought transformation—it heightened my awareness of everyday things and taught me to see from new perspectives. Returning home after months away, I found myself paying close attention to sounds, scents, conversations, and architecture. Everything felt renewed.

Laura: Many of my inspirations come from shared moments with people who reveal fragments of their world. I had the chance to learn traditional Taiwanese weaving techniques, especially from rush-weaving master Lu Jin Xia in Miaoli. Even with our language barrier, our gestures became a powerful form of communication. I’m not planning to replicate Lu's craft—it belongs to her—but I do want to capture the essence of our exchanges. Beyond techniques, it’s about integrating a mindset and creative spirit.

Laura: During my second residency, I collaborated with Lu on a sculpture for In Between, also supported by Taiwan’s Have Shoulder studio and Montreuil in France. It embodies hours of shared learning and collective artistry. At the closing event, dancers U Seng Io and U Seng I performed with my pieces, responding intuitively. Watching their movements bring life to my work was mesmerizing.

Laura: This sculpture was created following my first residency at Yao Space in Taichung. Upon returning to Paris, I completed a six-month residency at Villa Panthéon, where I transformed the weaving techniques I learned in Taiwan into a performative piece. I envisioned a large woven structure that functions both as a sculpture and a mask, bringing parts of the exhibition to life through dance and shifting their form. Using backstrap weaving, I stretched warp threads across the studio’s architecture, with invaluable support from my assistants, Ilona Barbier and Nour Eh Salah. This complex weaving, composed of metal threads, plant seeds, and dyed fibers, took several hundred hours to complete. Inspired by orchids and insects, the piece embodies a hybrid form with a mysterious identity that merges into its surrounding elements.

Laura: “Playing games of string figures is about giving and receiving patterns, dropping threads and failing but sometimes finding something that works, something consequential and maybe even beautiful, that wasn’t there before, of relaying connections that matter, of telling stories in hand upon hand, digit upon digit, attachment site upon attachment site, to craft conditions for finite flourishing on terra, on earth.”
—Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, 2016.

This quote reminds me that creation is a way of life and that failure is part of the process. For me, creativity unfolds through intuition. We can’t always succeed exactly as we plan; sometimes, failure brings us to unexpected discoveries we might never have reached otherwise.

Laura: Some of my early works drew inspiration from spiders. In 2022, this took the form of plant and metal tentacular weavings. I enjoy using this figure in my installations because it alludes to the woven web as an extension of the spider’s body, to which many things adhere—this is mirrored in my work by the people I meet, objects I collect, and methods of thinking and observing, which often serve as the starting points for my creations.

The web is no longer a place of predation but rather one of empowerment. I build my practice as an environment where various forms intertwine, influenced by my encounters as well as by gestures and materials. Each form questions our relationship with our environment.

Laura: Yvon Lambert bookshop, L'Obscur, thrift shop ,Chloe Salgado Gallery

Laura:Studying textiles and production has made me aware of the ethical and ecological implications of garment-making. During a year in Japan in 2020, I had the privilege of working with traditional kimono artisans, from spinning and weaving to cultivating dye plants, gaining a deep appreciation for the slow, environmentally respectful process of creating garments.

I see clothing as both a political and ecological tool. I’m inspired by designers like Emma Bruchi, who draws on rural fashion and craftsmanship to create socially responsible fashion. I also admire Marine Serre’s upcycled designs, Naomi Gilon’s works that blend fashion and ceramics, capturing both the sublime and terrifying (@naomigilon), and Angele Lepolard (@vetement.fragile), who explores our relationship with clothing and vulnerability by merging art and fashion.