Nina Fradet

Visual artist and maker Nina Fradet seeks to bring out the expressiveness of the materials she uses. Fascinated by the overlaps between different arts, her work connects design with craftsmanship and visual arts. After studying interior design and cabinetmaking, she slowly refined a longstanding idea on the potential relation between furniture-making and Japanese takezaiku bamboo weaving, finding its essence in the exercise of line and an awareness of the gestures that bring it to life. She further developed her technique over a two-year period shared between Iceland and Japan. Enthused by the creative energy behind every encounter, she has extended her research to other areas, always with the purpose of revealing the material’s fragile beauty.

Nina Fradet’s research highlights the value of traditional craft skills through a sensorial approach, in a dialogue between takezaiku and furniture-making. Traditionally, takezaiku artisans create light, delicate objects for ikebana, tea ceremonies and tableware. Fradet’s project repurposes the technique for wood, taking the potential of weaving to its furthest point.

She employs the characteristics of furniture-making to produce voluminous objects that reveal the material’s mechanical strength, in contrast with the structure’s apparent fragility. Blurring the boundary between visual arts and crafts, these pieces have no given function, highlighting instead the sensitive nature of the material through the expressiveness of the technique. Simply by interweaving thin strips of bamboo, takezaiku has the rare capacity to produce objects which are as refined as they are functional, causing no pollution in the process. By demonstrating that this technique can be equally effective when replacing bamboo by wood, Nina Fradet paves the way for a more ethical and sustainable use of this precious resource.