Choreographing Cloth: Textile Automata by Pinaffo & Pluvinage

In the work of Pinaffo & Pluvinage, textiles are never static. They breathe, sway, awaken and withdraw, animated by time, air and carefully calibrated mechanics. Since forming their studio in 2015, French duo Marion Pinaffo and Raphaël Pluvinage have developed a distinctive practice that sits between design, fine art and engineering, using simple materials and intuitive systems to reveal the poetry of movement. Trained as designers, they are drawn to the physical realities that underpin the digital world, exploring how automata, repetition and mathematical logic might converse with human sensitivity and imagination.

'Voutes et Volutes'. © Pinaffo & Pluvinage

Over the past decade, their work has been exhibited internationally, from the Centre Pompidou and the Gaîté Lyrique in Paris to the Triennale di Milano and Design Museum Holon. Increasingly, textiles have become a part of their kinetic language: light, fragile, and gently responsive, fabric here seems to offer the ideal medium through which to make motion visible...

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Image Credits:

Lead: Pinaffo — Pluvinage, Fanions et carillons , 2023, Mixed media installation (4 x 2 x 7m) painted wood, motor, silk, electronic.

All further images as credited in captions.