DISTILLED LANDSCAPES

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Interview to Belén Rodríguez (b. 1981), lives and works in Esles, Cantabria. 

We meet Valladolid born artist Belén Rodríguez surrounded by oaks, chestnut trees, ferns, and verbena. Here, seated on three chairs around a small table at the back of the Cantabrian garden where her home and studio are located, everything seems to blend, both visually and chromatically, with her work: textiles that she embroiders by hand and colours using natural dyes extracted directly from the vegetation around us.

In this setting, we speak with the artist about the richness of working directly with her surroundings, about the beauty of imperfection, childhood as a space of freedom, and art as a way of life.

Looking back, how did it all begin for you? Do you have any memories connected to textile art that you feel led you to do what you do today?

Not specifically related to textiles. I've always been interested in art, ever since I was little. My mother was a sculptor, and several of my uncles are architects, so art was something that was very naturally accepted in my family. I do remember making collages with fabric as a child, which I loved. Back then, I was also very interested in archaeology. I was fascinated by the idea of exploring and the possibility of discovering buried objects.

Later, as a teenager, I became very interested in fashion, but at some point I felt drawn to something beyond it. That's when I realised that what I really wanted to study was Fine Arts.

I started out working with different media and, almost without realising it, found myself increasingly drawn to fabric. It's something I've returned to several times throughout my life: I've stepped away from it and come back to it at different moments. At this point, I'm very interested in continuing to explore and develop my work with textiles, because I feel I've found a path I'm really comfortable with. But that doesn't mean I don't feel free to change mediums or materials. In fact, I think I've always been very multidisciplinary.

Before moving to Cantabria, you studied in Madrid, Berlin and Vienna, and took part in artist residencies in Japan, Colombia… As an artist whose practice is so closely connected to her surroundings, how have these experiences abroad shaped your work?

All those different contexts have had a deep influence on me. Ultimately, arriving in a new environment and going through the process of adapting to its rules and customs forces you to develop an enormous degree of mental flexibility.

I first studied in Madrid, where I also worked at the Museo Casa de la Moneda. Afterwards, I went to Berlin on an Erasmus exchange. When I arrived, even though I was about to finish my degree, I felt as though I was only just beginning. In Germany, I met my partner at the time, a Viennese artist, and we decided to move to Vienna together. There, I discovered the university, which was very similar to the one in Berlin and had excellent professors. It was also practically free, so I decided to start my studies all over again. And that's exactly what I did: I spent five years completing a Bachelor's degree and then a Master's.

In Colombia, where I took part in an artist residency, I learned an incredible amount from the artists I met. That's where I first came into contact with natural dyes, for example. I also spent time in Los Angeles, which was equally enriching, although perhaps in a different way: it made me more critical of certain systems of values.

By the time I came here, to Cantabria, I was already very used to allowing places to influence me. Beginning to live in such a radically different environment, right in the heart of the countryside, has had an enormous impact on my relationship with the materials I work with. In the end, I almost see my life here as another artist residency.


I find the connection you've established with your surroundings really beautiful. I wonder whether, through this process, you feel you've developed a deeper, more intimate understanding of the nature around you.

Absolutely. You develop a very personal bond with it. There's something really beautiful about learning to pay attention to something that's always been there, like flowers, which you might previously have perceived as a shapeless mass, and discovering that, in fact, they have such incredibly intricate forms.

There's a text that Chus Martínez wrote in connection with the project we did with the forest, which coincided with my exhibition at the Museo Patio Herreriano, where I showed my work with natural dyes for the first time. I really liked a reflection she made: it's not that the work isn't ecological — because it is — but the point isn't to make ecological or environmentalist art. Rather, it's about paying attention to how nature works and finding it interesting and exemplary enough to want to understand it and take inspiration from it.

I'm also intrigued by your decision to move here, as it means physically distancing yourselves from the main art circuits, both in Spain and internationally. Has that been difficult, or has it actually given you a certain perspective or freedom?

My partner, who's also an artist, and I spent a long time living abroad, during what were probably the most formative years of our lives. I think that experience is what has made it possible for us to live here now. That said, I felt very much at home here from the beginning. When we first arrived, the local council gave us the use of an old hermitage as a studio. At the time, I felt that this place needed new people like us, whereas in Madrid there are so many of us that it sometimes feels as though there's no room left.

What has been a wonderful surprise, and something I never could have imagined, is that living in Cantabria has connected us with a different kind of art scene, made up of people and projects in similar circumstances. For example, this summer I spent some time at Podere Trafonti, a rural project in Tuscany with a strong focus on reciprocity with nature. Around the same time, a small institution in Scotland came across my work and got in touch about organising an exhibition there. It's a setting very similar to this one: a project run by a group of women living in a rural area, who have an old factory where they organise exhibitions.

Suddenly, almost without looking for it, I find myself connecting with like-minded communities, and one project leads to another. I find it incredible. I love the idea of the art world becoming more decentralised, of smaller places gaining importance, of supporting one another and finding new places to focus our attention beyond the big cities. There's a special new energy emerging from rural areas.


Moving on to your creative process, your work has sometimes been associated with alchemy. Do you see any parallels between the figure of the artist and the alchemist?

I don't remember alchemy being specifically mentioned, but there is something I find particularly interesting about working with the colours I find here: I've discovered that there is a kind of "dual nature" to colour. The shades I obtain aren't necessarily the ones we see in the landscape, but rather depend on the chemical processes involved in extracting them and using them as dyes.

For example, green, which is the predominant colour all around us right now, is actually one of the most difficult colours to achieve using natural dyes. In most cases, what you end up with is yellow. Certain roots, barks and flowers can produce other shades, and it's even possible to obtain blue from indigo, but these are relatively rare exceptions.

One of the works I presented at the Museo Patio Herreriano was a large textile curtain depicting a kind of inverted landscape, almost like a discolouration. I call it "the distillation of a landscape." It's as though you took a landscape, submerged it in water and observed what emerged from it. It reminds me a little of pH indicators, that moment when the water begins to rise and the colour gradually appears. The work operates in a similar way: as though I had submerged a landscape in water to discover the colours it holds within.

So there is a dual nature to the colours of what we're seeing, almost like a mirror revealing another reality. There is another nature, another colour, beyond what we perceive. The way we see is conditioned by the cells in our eyes, which allow us to distinguish a particular range of colours. If we had different cells, perhaps we would perceive different colours, and maybe those other shades would be closer to the ones contained in the dyes of the things we see. I find that fascinating.

Image courtesy of the artist. Sal Mécanica, Museo Patio Herreriano, 2023. 

You've also spoken about how, during the weaving process itself, mistakes or imperfections emerge in the fabric that you find interesting. When you begin a piece, do you have a preconceived idea of how you want it to turn out, or do you let the process guide you?

There's always a preconceived idea, but nothing ever turns out exactly as you imagine. In any creative process, there's always an accident, an imperfection or something unexpected, and often that's precisely what makes the work interesting. That's when how you respond to the "mistake" comes into play, and it relates to the mental flexibility I was talking about earlier, to being able to learn from a new context. It's about cultivating a way of seeing that's open to change and surprise. Depending on how you react, you can either make the work come together or completely mess it up [laughs].

For example, lately I've been making some textile paintings inspired by a technique known as ikat in Indonesia, or kasuri in Japanese. With this technique, everything has to be carefully planned before you begin making the piece, because the fibres are partially dyed before being woven together. Then, as you interlace them, the dyed sections come together and the pattern emerges. It's almost like a musical score: everything has to be very, very clearly defined in advance.

But, as the art critic Sōetsu Yanagi says, no matter how much of a perfectionist you are, there's always something that escapes your control, something inherent to the nature of the materials themselves. This means that the pattern never aligns perfectly, creating subtle gradations of colour or causing the motif to blur slightly. Interestingly, that's precisely what makes it so much more beautiful.

In fact, in one of Yanagi's books on these textiles, he tells the story of a Japanese emperor who wanted to obtain a perfect kasuri, or ikat. The artisans went to extraordinary lengths to achieve this perfection, and when they finally succeeded, the result was a lifeless fabric, completely devoid of charm.

I think it's a beautiful story: it's precisely what escapes perfection that gives the fabric its life.


As you mentioned, textile art has a rich heritage, not only within art itself, but also as a practice developed by many different cultures as a way of passing down stories, myths and knowledge. Are you interested in this narrative dimension?

Yes. The narrative dimension of textiles is incredible. When you start delving deeper into them, you discover that they really are a universal language, connecting us with countless generations and cultures. There's an enormous amount of cultural exchange and cross-pollination, but we've also naturally arrived at the same conclusions in different parts of the world, simply because we're human. I find it fascinating how much textile practices reveal about humanity itself, right from its beginnings.

Are you particularly drawn to the textile traditions of any specific culture?

Right now, I'm quite focused on Japan. I've been very interested in it ever since I took part in an artist residency there in 2009, and I later returned with a project supported by a grant from the Fundación Botín. What interested me in particular was the connection with my own practice, as I work a lot with the idea of sourcing materials locally and exploring what I can create using what's available in my immediate surroundings. Although that's no longer necessarily the case, Japan has traditionally been an example of self-sufficiency. For a long time, it was closed off to other cultures, relied on its own materials and, for centuries, needed very little from the outside world.

I wanted to learn from those textiles because they were so closely connected to local solutions. Similar traditions exist here too, but they've become much more intertwined with outside influences over the centuries. That's why I'm currently so interested in the stories behind Japanese textiles.

Lately, I've also been reading more about Indigenous North American cultures. There's an author, Robin Wall Kimmerer, who has written some beautiful books about reciprocity with nature. I think we have a great deal to learn from these cultures and from the relationships they maintained with their surroundings, relationships based on a certain balance and an awareness that, if you take something from nature, there should also be some form of gratitude or giving back.

We've largely lost that way of seeing the world. I'm still at the beginning of this research, but I'm very interested in learning from these cultures and the ways in which they established a more balanced relationship with nature.

The piece you created with the support of the Fundación Botín grant, Farmer’s Jacket (2024), is a unique garment inspired by Japanese bashōfu. This work seems to challenge certain socioeconomic dynamics that are very prevalent today, such as globalisation, the worldwide circulation of textiles and the impact all of this has on nature. Are these issues something you consciously consider when creating your work?

Yes, absolutely. That piece is precisely the result of my trip to Japan, where I went to learn about textiles that traditionally didn't require materials from outside their immediate surroundings. I wanted to absorb the philosophical ideas behind these textiles and bring them into my own life and practice: to encourage a different relationship with time and materials. The question was: how can I, as a woman living in the 21st century, in the particular place where I live, develop a practice that's consistent with these ideas and with my own life?

I decided to create a garment because I specifically wanted to reflect on the fashion industry, where practically everything is disposable. To me, it's obvious that something isn't working within that system, and I don't understand why we're not more aware of it. At the opposite end of today's dynamics is, for example, the traditional practice of making bashōfu in Okinawa. It was made from banana plant fibres and dyed using materials available locally, such as indigo and rhaphiolepis. Over several months, people in the region would produce a piece of fabric that would eventually become their kimono, their everyday clothing. It wasn't a garment reserved for special occasions, but a textile that formed part of daily life.

I was also interested in the personal and familial dimension of these pieces, and in how the techniques are passed down through generations within families. There are documentaries showing some of the last women who still make bashōfu: they're together, as a community, chatting peacefully as they extract the fibres and weave. In those moments, they establish a different relationship with time, with materials and with one another, one that's much slower and more attentive. I feel that's something we've largely forgotten in the West. All of this led me to ask myself: why can't we be a little more restrained and stop needing so many new things? How can I apply these ideas to my own life?

When I returned to Cantabria, I couldn't find a fabric that had been made entirely here, using local materials. I visited Textil Santanderina, a very large textile factory in the region that also makes considerable efforts towards sustainability, and even they didn't have a fabric produced entirely locally. My response was to recycle my own materials. I came to the conclusion that I could weave my own fabric using remnants from previous works and make myself an outfit that I could wear every day.

In the end, it's more symbolic than practical, because I don't actually wear it as everyday clothing. It's become an artwork. But that was my response.

You've touched on this in your previous answer, but another issue associated with textile art is its traditional connection to women's work. When developing your practice, do you think about questions of gender? Are you interested in exploring or engaging with this aspect of textile tradition?

It's not something I consciously research, nor is it my starting point. But it's true that, over time, I've become increasingly aware of that dimension. For example, when I studied in Vienna, I was in a very male-dominated environment, although at the time I wasn't fully aware of what that meant. I was younger and had come from Southern Europe, so I was constantly trying to adapt and learn from everything I encountered there: the materials being used, the types of techniques, the pace of working...

Over the years, I've realised that there wasn't actually much room for a perspective like mine. It wasn't simply a matter of me having to learn from my surroundings; there wasn't much interest in my way of seeing things either. At the time, I didn't have the tools to recognise this or respond to it. But as I've gained some distance and become more comfortable with my own practice, I've realised that I've always had my own perspective. And ultimately, that perspective is feminine, but it's also Mediterranean and Southern European. It's a particular way of seeing the world, and there's nothing wrong with that.

There's another aspect of textile practice that relates to what you're saying: rather than femininity, it has to do with care. Many textile garments envelop, hold and protect us. Are these concepts something you keep in mind when creating your work?

I don't know if I think about them consciously, but I do believe that, in my case, I started feeling comfortable working with textiles because fabric is a soft material and relatively easy to handle. I'm not particularly physically strong, and working with this material makes me feel more capable of creating large-scale pieces, because I can control it more easily. I can cut it, sew it, fold it... It allows me to cover large areas within an exhibition space, and then, when I pack it away, it doesn't take up that much room.

In the past, I've worked with cement, for example, and also with technology, although that's a lesser-known aspect of my practice. For those projects, I used mechanisms that I didn't know how to operate myself, so I needed help from people with different kinds of technical expertise. Little by little, through a series of discoveries, I realised that I felt very comfortable working with fabric because it's a material I can manage entirely on my own.

So yes, there's definitely something that attracts me to textiles, something to do with their texture, their weight and that soft, pliable quality of the material.


You've also created large-scale pieces that, in a way, shape the spaces in which they're installed.

Yes, I'm very interested in responding to spaces. It's a very important part of my practice because, ultimately, the work also has to seduce and establish a certain sense of complicity with the people who come to see it. I like there to be an element of sensuality in the way things are arranged, in how they envelop the viewer and create that connection.

Although it really depends on the work. Sometimes I've created site-specific pieces, which is a format I love working with, while at other times I've had to adapt an existing work to a particular space. But something relatively new for me is that I'm increasingly interested in interacting with the viewer.

Image provided by the artist. (C) : Roberto Ruiz. 

The titles of your works also evoke quite a visceral imagery, with words such as "womb" or "skin", which might suggest an almost maternal relationship with your pieces. Is that something you identify with?

Not exactly, because I have a son, and it's very different. I love my son and I love my work, but they're two completely different kinds of love. When I make a piece and it becomes independent of me, I have no problem letting it go and allowing it to belong to someone else. But I wouldn't let go of my son quite so easily [laughs]. For me, they're very different things, even though the love I feel for both is genuine.

The thing about art is that, for me, it's something deeply instinctive and necessary. It's therapeutic; it's my life, really. And in many cases, there's something very bodily and physical about that relationship. I've often expressed very personal things through my work; it comes straight from the gut. In that sense, of course it's something extremely intimate, but it's not a child. It's something else entirely.

What would you say is your main motivation for creating art?

Instinct. I can't live without doing this. I can't imagine my life without it.

There's no particular reason. It's like watching a child play and wondering why they're playing. It simply comes naturally to them. Stopping that play would be like trying to hold back a torrent: it can't stop, it simply can't help itself.

That's what my work is like for me. And because I've always known this so clearly, and never had anyone trying to hold back that torrent, I can't imagine my life without it. It's my way of living and being in the world.

Do you see a connection between a child’s creativity and being an artist?

Absolutely. I learn so much from my son when I watch him play and observe the solutions he comes up with through the objects he creates, his way of seeing things or the things he says. Really, when you think about it, why does a child play? Because it's a way of making sense of the world, of understanding it, of learning. I think we artists do something similar: we try to process reality through these kinds of experiments and explorations.

I play when I work. The ideas I come up with for my pieces are like games in which I establish my own rules and experiment within them to see what emerges. There's a sense of constant exploration throughout that process.

That's why I always think that, ultimately, artworks are really questions. As artists, we have so many of them, and this is how we give them expression.

You've mentioned that you've lived and worked abroad on several occasions. Based on those experiences, how do you see the art scene in Spain compared to other countries? Is there anything you miss?

Yes, there are many things I miss. I think the way we appreciate and nurture art in Spain shows that it's far from being a priority. It doesn't rank particularly high on the government's list of priorities, and that attitude eventually filters down into the rest of society. If art isn't even given enough importance in schools, it's difficult for people to grow up understanding just how essential it is.

Culture is essential for a society to grow, and I think that, in our country, we still haven't fully understood that. I don't know if we ever will, to be honest.

To finish, what are your dreams as an artist? Is there a project you'd love to undertake or any future plans you're particularly excited about?

The truth is, I don't really know. I'd like to be able to keep making a living from my work.

A nightmare for me — the exact opposite of that dream — would be something that happens quite often in Spain: suddenly disappearing from the art scene. Sometimes an artist emerges and everyone focuses their attention on them. That artist might be working incredibly hard, but for some reason, the trend passes and they disappear from view. For me, the nightmare would be no longer being able to continue doing what makes me so happy and having to find another way to make a living.

So, if that's my nightmare, my dream is simply to carry on as I am.

Images courtesy of the artist, in order of appearance in the mobile version:
Photograph 16: Voz por Noche, 2023.
Photograph 17: Wombo Lombo, 2023.
Photograph 18: I Danced Myself out of the Womb, 2023. © Marcos Morilla.

Interview by Victoria Álvarez Conde. 09.11.26