Tomás Saraceno is best known for his Arachnophilia project, an interdisciplinary community based on the study of spiders and their webs, which has been running for over ten years. These prehistoric animals have fascinated him since childhood for the beauty of their webs, which they have been making for around 130 million years. He sees them as a metaphor for our interconnected world. Saraceno’s work is carried out in collaboration with local communities, scientific researchers and institutions around the world. His aim is to find a better balance between man, technology and biology, starting from specific situations.
Arachne’s handwoven Spider/Web Map of semi-social 29 Cephei, with one Cyrtophora citricola – five weeks
Hand woven black thread on cotton canvas
133 x 197 cm
52 3/8 x 77 1/2 in
2022
Unique piece
A spider/web begins with a single thread of silk thrown into the air, loose and undulating, until it is stretched by the wind. Each strand of spider silk is therefore a web in the making, drifting through the air until it encounters a surface that becomes a point of attachment. Each thread of silk marks an arc of movement: the spider’s first threads in the air are incursions into an imagined future, and the taut threads of the assembled web mark the axes along which the spider has already travelled. The spider/web is thus a living trace of movement and temporality in tension: past, present and future.
