Tissages Lumières | Kenia Almaraz Murillo

Kenia Almaraz Murillo trained in flat weaving alongside Simone Prouvé. This traditional craft allowed her to reconnect with the ancestral and family expertise of Bolivian weaving.
From her very first weavings, Kenia decided to incorporate light in various forms. Woven, embroidered or suspended in the middle of the pieces, this light permeates the compositions and imposes a cali(carto)graphic rhythm on them. Car, scooter and truck headlights give certain pieces a piercing and hypnotic look.

Her inspiration comes from her dreams, which she transcribes and draws, as well as from Bolivian urban legends. She mixes these different references to compose a personal mythology imbued with symbolism.
Inspired by neo-Andean architecture and Bolivian muralists, who often adorn their buildings with long lines of colour, she has collaborated many times with artist Elliott Causse on a series of frescoes between Paris and Santa Cruz, where she accentuates the urban influences of her work to offer immersions in the city’s flow.

Movement, rhythm, light: these elements can be found in the kinetic sculpture by Studio Élémentaires that accompanies it here, but also in the museum’s machine room, where the looms resonate with his works. We leave the realm of craftsmanship and enter fully into that of art.

A complete artist, Kenia is also a dancer in the Mi Viejo San Simon Paris dance troupe. Mesmerised by the repetitive rhythms of the colourful costumes during parades – sometimes verging on trance – she pays tribute to this energy, the twirling shapes and the entire community of dancers and artisan dressmakers of Bolivia in her weavings.

Kenia Almaraz Murillo is a Bolivian artist born in Santa Cruz de la Sierra in 1994. She lives and works in Paris. In 2021, Kenia joined a traditional Caporales dance group. This Bolivian dance is one of the many folk dances of the Oruro Carnival, one of the largest carnivals in the world.

AROUND THE EXHIBITION | OUTSIDE THE WALLS

On the occasion of the 3rd edition of the Urban Cultures Festival (URBX), discover a new monumental mural on the brutalist walls of the Pays de Roubaix sports hall, ‘Le Scarabée Cyan’ (The Cyan Beetle) by Kenia Almaraz Murillo and Elliott Causse.