AITOR SARAIBA: EMBROIDERER AND ILLUSTRATOR

Aitor Saraiba´s work is articulated through multiple mediums including drawing, ceramics, textile, painting, video and, photography. Saraiba’s imagery is complex in its approach but with an affected background full of sentiment. As a child he loved to draw and tell stories and that lies beneath his pictorial works: profound stories, autobiographical in many cases.   A graduate in Fine Arts from the University of Cuenca, his publications include El hijo del Legionario (2011), awarded Best Graphic Novel IED in 2016; Pajarillo (2012) and Nada más importa (2013). These books were followed by others in which the drawing began to fade and the power of literature took hold of works such as Por el Olvido (2018) and Me encanta cuando tus garras acarician mi alma (2019), the latter among the ten best-selling poetry books in Spain on the week following its publication.

In 2011 Saraiba initiated a collaboration with Centro Cerámico Talavera that has generated more than 50 pieces so far, proudly using the pottery style know as Talavera, which has been recently declared an intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO (2019).

Saraiba has mutated his drawing and colour palette in a very sensitive way into the series entitled Crisálidas, a number of textile sculptures to represent cocoons of different sizes and proportions, using meticulous textile craft techniques.

Aitor Saraiba is currently working on his PhD thesis on female artist psychic born in the 19th and early 20th centuries and, also is part of Sintonía Radiante, a research project on the interferences between art, magic and science (Matadero Estudios Críticos de Matadero Madrid). In addition to this, he is finalising the production of the documentary that he wrote and directed, El Circulo Mágico.

Aitor uses embroidery as a tool for his art. “My mother taught me when I was a child, I have seen it all my life in my house. In my streets, the neighbors gathered with chairs at the door of their houses and embroidered all together, sharing their knowledge and their daily lives…I learned to sew before I learned to draw. To embroider or sew being a man in my environment was not very well seen, even my grandmother told me that on Sundays I could not sew because God would be angry with me. My personal biography is linked to embroidery, it was impossible not to include this technique in my artistic production.”… “Since the beginning of my journey, textiles have been very present in my work. I always have textiles on hand, left over, old sheets or t-shirts that were no longer used. When you are a young artist, those things are very important and textiles and their techniques have always been in my life. In my neighborhood there were many sewing workshops and sadly there are none left today. Even as a teenager I spent entire summers working in those textile workshops. Marcella Echavarria

@aitorsaraiba