The garments are from the exhibition Nature * Patterns by Maura Biava. Nature * Patterns revolves around the ideas of information and hidden geometries behind what we see in nature at first glance. The show combines several techniques and opens up photography to fashion, performance and tapestry art. Alongside photography, exhibited artworks include photography-based fashion garments and tapestries, as well as sculpture, painting and drawing. Biava approaches her exhibition in a collaborative, sustainable and inclusive way. Presented artworks explore and depict nature, together with its relation to mathematics and symmetry.
In the natural world, pattern structures are central to morphogenesis — the biological process causing cells and organisms to develop their shape. Together with symmetry and repetition, patterns often form order in nature. For many scientists, the capacity of humans to recognise patterns is considered a crux of our intellect and at the core of our ability to communicate, imagine and invent. Maura Biava believes that the antiquated position of a human being as a neutral observer, or at best an appreciator of nature, has run its course. Because we believed in this old-fashioned point of view, we became detached from the natural systems that we now know we are part of. According to Biava, a shift of attention from admiration to investigation will enable us to understand why things are formed and developed as they are.
Maura Biava — an Italian, Amsterdam-based artist — is inspired by the hidden laws of nature. She is intrigued by how the regular forms of the organic world originate according to specific mathematic rules. In her artistic practice, Biava aims to create works that follow the same principles. She employs analytic geometry and mathematics to create, understand and work with shapes and patterns. “The interaction between information, matter, and energy informs and shapes what we see, it forms our reality,” says Maura Biava. To show this interaction in her work, she uses clay as matter, mathematics and numbers as information, and her actions and hands at work as energy. Maura Biava graduated from the Academy of Brera in Milan (1992) and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam (1999). Her work as a multimedia artist was exhibited all over the world, including the US, the UK, Australia, China, the Netherlands and all over Europe. In 2021, Biava had a solo exhibition at Museum Beelden aan Zee in the Hague. Her work is in the collections at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Stedelijk Museum De Domijnen, Sittard, Kunstfort Centrum voor Actuele Kunst, Akzo Nobel Art Foundation and De Nederlandsche Bank. Maura Biava — an Italian, Amsterdam-based artist — is inspired by the hidden laws of nature. She is intrigued by how the regular forms of the organic world originate according to specific mathematic rules. In her artistic practice, Biava aims to create works that follow the same principles. She employs analytic geometry and mathematics to create, understand and work with shapes and patterns. “The interaction between information, matter, and energy informs and shapes what we see, it forms our reality,” says Maura Biava. To show this interaction in her work, she uses clay as matter, mathematics and numbers as information, and her actions and hands at work as energy. Maura Biava graduated from the Academy of Brera in Milan (1992) and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam (1999). Her work as a multimedia artist was exhibited all over the world, including the US, the UK, Australia, China, the Netherlands and all over Europe. In 2021, Biava had a solo exhibition at Museum Beelden aan Zee in the Hague. Her work is in the collections at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Stedelijk Museum De Domijnen, Sittard, Kunstfort Centrum voor Actuele Kunst, Akzo Nobel Art Foundation and De Nederlandsche Bank.