Where Process Leads: The Textile Art of Camilla Iliefski
Camilla Ilifeski is a Swedish textile artist, designer and professor at the Academy of Art and Design, HDK-Valand, in Gothenburg. Her hand tufted wall hangings travel all over the world. In her atelier she works across disciplines in design and crafts, with a deep interest in the role that process and material play in her work.
Portrait of Camilla Iliefski at work in her studio
This time, it was a pile of wool and linen yarns in pale colours lying around her atelier at Sockerbruket that caught her attention. Colour shades reminiscent of the Scandinavian summer skies. Camilla Iliefski grabbed a pen and, as usual, spent less than five minutes sketching and outlining the design directly onto the backing fabric, moving fast, but thoughtfully. Clouds; did they feel like the formations in the sky she had experienced yesterday when riding back by train from Copenhagen to Gothenburg, contemplating the vast coastal landscape? She framed the fabric and began to punch yarn through it with a tufting gun.
Below the Surface, Camilla Iliefski. Hand-tufted tapestry in wool and linen, 2023.
From the exhibition Common Landscape together with Eva Zethraeus.
Photo by Sebastian Waldenby.
‘The process is everything to me. I need the making and the doing to feel a bit scary. Wide open with a sense of not knowing’. This keeps her on her toes, feeds her curiosity and pushes her to constantly evolve. ‘Even after fifteen years of working with this technique, I feel freer than ever. Now, I am able to fully explore and push the boundaries of what I can create’, says Camilla.
Camilla Iliefski hand tufting and finishing in her studio.
During the creative process, it becomes evident to her what feels relevant. She takes a few steps back and looks at the whole piece, and then changes colour shades by mixing the threads to a desired effect, like a painter would mix paint. These subtle colour shades are perhaps Camilla’s signature, as are the repeated organic shapes often inspired by nature and her own garden. ‘Then there is, of course, the moment when I doubt. Will this work? Was it a good idea?’ she smiles. Having worked with design students for twenty years at HDK-Valand she talks about design and crafts every day, something she values and appreciates. ‘We do talk a lot about the process; it needs to personal and unique for every artist’. Camilla was herself a student at the school for five years, and holds a master’s degree in graphic design.
Colour Geometry (Detail), Camilla Iliefski. Hand-tufted tapestry in wool and linen, 2021.
‘No surface is left ‘dead’, if you know what I mean. The whole piece should feel alive and vibrant, nothing dull or boring’, Camilla explains. When she is finished using the tufting gun, she lays the piece down horizontally and begins to hand trim and cut with scissors. A tool she has always found both beautiful and enjoys working with. ‘This way I shape the volumes to create proportions. And it is at this stage where I spend the most time’. Her wall hangings are all about how the threads relate to one another, and together form the piece. A play with optical illusions. She says: ‘It should never look like dots’.
Words by Petra Dokken
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Further Information:
This winter Camilla Iliefski is working on a new series for an exhibition in New York at Hostler Burrows Gallery, to open in Spring 2026.
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Image Credits:
Lead: The Garden in a Dream, Camilla Iliefski. Public art commission for the City of Borås.
Completed and installed in November 2024. Photo: Sebastian Waldenby
All further images as credited in photo captions.
Photos Mike Karlsson Lundgren and Sebastian Waldenby