Indigo, pomegranate, onion skins and turmeric are coaxed into new life through knotting, weaving, felting and embroidery; biodegradable and up-cycled fibres, eco-dyed and botanically printed, form the material ground of the work.

It emerges from daily attention to the Portuguese landscape de Villiers inhabits — winding mountain roads, abrupt cuttings, sudden landfalls where strata and roots are laid bare. She is both witness and participant in the slow process of matter becoming form, seeing above and below at once.

The suspended format, raised from the ground yet always referring back to it, echoes the exhibition’s concept, Vice Versa: what is hidden is revealed, what is usually beneath is elevated. To work in fibre is to acknowledge fragility, porosity and decay — these materials will one day decompose, yet for now they insist upon entanglement.

The work also grew from de Villiers’ long fascination with the underground world of plants and fungi — the entangled, mycelial life beneath the surface that her exposed roots reveal.