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The Weave of the Invisible: A Dialogue between Ritual and Modernity

  • Natalia Ruiz
  • 2 days ago
  • 3 min read

Article by Natalia Ruiz


There are ritual processes intrinsic to the origin of humanity; weaving is one of them. Since its inception, weaving has been a way to catch time, order chaos, and decipher the cosmos. It is a language that precedes the written word: our first grammar and one of the primordial methodologies of teaching.

This premise is not merely a historical reference, but a material experience in my artistic journey. My work is born at the intersection where thread becomes code and painting surrenders to the mysticism of the atavistic.


Flor de Vida
Flor de Vida

The Integration of the Symbol

After years of shaping external realities as a set designer and art director, I reached a point of no return. I chose to renounce artifice to seek a greater depth. This return was not only technical but also geographical and spiritual. By then, I was already walking what could be called "the path of ancestral thought." Through this dialogue with wise elders (sabedores and sabedoras), I understood that ancestral cosmogonies are not "the other," but a shared atmosphere. My artistic practice is situated precisely within this dance: a modern dialogue exposed to ritual, magic, and transcendence, where painting and embroidery cohabit to reveal what was hidden.


YIARI
YIARI

The Creative Process

I strive for a creative process that runs counter to contemporary immediacy. Each project is the materialization of a deep, slow, and joyful spiritual integration. First comes sacred listening, followed by Reading The Territory[1]  finally overflowing into my sketchbook—the precursor to the birth of the final piece where figurative portraiture and weaving merge. Here, the weave is not an accessory upon the image; it is the very structure of being. In my faces, masks, and large-format works, the thread is an extension of the skin and thought; a way of embroidering the narrative of who we are.


Pensamiento Mujer
Pensamiento Mujer

Art as an Offering: Healing and Integrating

I understand my craft not as an end in itself, but as a bridge of service. For me, inhabiting the state of art is a form of grounding that allows me to place my gifts at the service of a higher purpose: the integration of the being. In a world that often feels fragmented, my work and the processes I facilitate through art seek to be spaces for healing, where that which has been silenced can be named once more.

Weaving and painting are, ultimately, acts of placement: granting a place to memory, to the symbol, and to the traces of our ancestors and our soul path within the body of the present. My intention is for each piece to function as a mystical mirror where the viewer can recognize themselves not just as an individual, but as part of that universal and unbreakable framework. In the end, my art is a reminder that we are all a living tissue, and that within the beauty of the atavistic lies the strength to heal our shared territory.


[1] Reading the Territory is a form of knowledge that has been safeguarded and protected by the indigenous communities of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in northern Colombia. In the words of the wise elders (sabedores) who dwell there, it pertains to order, memory, and spirituality: "Reading a Territory is remembering an order; remembering how the territory was constructed and how it was ordered... it is remembering that everything has a spiritual home. To perform a reading of the territory is to remember the primary name of that place, because the information of the territory is stored there—that is, its raison d'être, the spiritual guardians who inhabit it... the nourishment it provides, the 'negative' that is confessed there.”

“A consultation with a territory is a consultation with the universe, because within each territory exists a manifestation and a representation at a micro level of a macrocosm; by making these consultations, we remember the cosmic and universal order, the galactic order."



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