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Portuguese textile artist Vanessa Barragão creates large artworks made from discarded wool and synthetic fibers. Her inspiration is aquatic plants and animals.
Barragão’s passion for textiles and the environment began at a young age. Growing up, her grandmother taught her a variety of weaving techniques, which Barragão still uses to make pieces today. She also traveled to the Caribbean as a child, where she saw the decline of the area’s coral reefs. Witnessing this environmental degradation is what sparked her love of sea life and conservation.
Her commitment to sustainability was reinforced when she worked at a rug factory after getting her bachelor’s degree in fashion design in 2013. The vast amount of waste generated by the textile industry she saw made her decide to become part of the solution.
In 2014, she returned to school at the University of Lisbon to get her master’s degree in fashion design and opened an art studio.
While completing her degree, she created a collection of wool yarn made from discarded wool sourced from local farms. Using techniques learned from her grandmother—including latch hook, crochet and felting—Barragão wove this yarn into some of her first art pieces.
Barragão’s piece Untitled was on display at the Biennale Arte & Design Funchal in Maediera, Portugal, from March to June. Untitled, like many of her works, depicts a coral reef made from blue, white and neutral color wool yarn, reminiscent of the coral reefs she saw on trips to the Caribbean. Her solo exhibition, “Submerso Imerso,” toured in 2024 and 2025, featuring several of her pieces. In 2025, the exhibition was on display in Ilhavo, Portugal. In 2024, it was on display at the Cristina Enea Foundation in San Sebastián, Spain, and at the Cultural Center of Lagos in Portugal.
One of her artworks, Coral Vivo (Living Coral), was chosen as Portugal’s gift to the United Nations (U.N.) in 2024. The piece is on display at the U.N.’s headquarters in New York City and is a part of the U.N.’s permanent collection.
Through her work, Barragão aims to raise awareness about global pollution, overconsumption and the need to protect the environment and endangered species.
