Jequi
Jequi
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Years: 2022
Type: Exhibition at the Akademie Schloss Solitude Summer Festival
Location: Stuttgart, Germany
Design/ Fabrication Team: Alexandra Pittiglio, Ailey Simpson
Artist: Aline Xavier Mineiro
Jequi is a term of indigenous origin that means fish trap. The Jequi project was started in 2017 by artist Aline Xavier Mineiro as an effort to digitize fish traps from ethnographic collections in Brazil. For the Akademie Schloss Summer Festival, we took the merging of indigenous knowledge and modern technology a step further by abstracting the weaving patterns and geometries of original fish traps and exploring fabrication strategies using flax Natural Fiber Reinforced Polymers (NFRPs).
Bending Studies
The smaller prototypes looked at how different weaving patterns from fish traps perform in bending. The same 30cm round frame was used for both objects. The pre-impregnated flax fiber rovings were wrapped around the frame following two weaving patterns common to fish traps: hexagonal and rectilinear. After curing, the flat surfaces were bent in the same way to produce differences in curvature, texture, and shadow.
Shaping Study
The larger prototype was wound directly into its final curved form on a temporary volumetric frame made from aluminum extrusions and pre-bent metal rods as embedded supports.
