Olga de Amaral is a key figure in the vanguard of artists that contributed to the growing acceptance of fibre art as a legitimate and consequential category of art making, deserving of critical attention. In 1969, de Amaral’s work was featured in Wall Hangings at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, which also included textile sculptures by Magdalena Abakanowicz, Sheila Hicks, and Lenore Tawney. This exhibition proved highly influential in the ongoing reevaluation of fibre art as a significant site of artistic enquiry, refusing the widespread dismissal of its associations with labour and use and instead recognising these elements as part of the medium’s creative potential. Muro tejido terruño 3 (1969) is an early example of de Amaral’s formal experimentation with textile as sculpture. Using multiple registers of vertical threads spirally wrapped, plaited, and bound together, de Amaral modulates surface, depth, and negative space to create a pulsating structure that appears at once architectonic and organic. In their rhythmic arrangement, the clusters of cord bunched together and set apart at intervals seem to be encoded with a subliminal or haptic metric, evoking the Incan practice of recordkeeping through the knotting and grouping of fibres on a quipu.
—Sybilla Griffin
