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’The Filaments of a Memory’
Tottenham Gallery SpaceSarabande Foundation
May 2025
Tottenham, London
Pieces exhibited: Soft sculpture installation, ‘Gesture Anthology’,
‘Fragments of sculpture’, ‘Braid Warp’
‘The Filaments of a Memory’ is Camila Barvo‘s debut solo show exhibition, hosted by Sarabande
Foundation at the Tottenhan Gallery space. Mystical and deeply connected to nature and the
internal essence, hair serves as a force of filaments that whisper, grow, and intertwine with
human existence. Camila Barvo’s sculptures invite to perceive hair as something far more
than just a cosmetic scenery encouraging reflection on the visceral nature of hair experiences.
Rooted in the power of fibre entanglement and referencing Latinamerican writer Maria Luisa
Bombal’s short story ‘Trenzas’, this exhibition unfolds a braided and knotted installation that
embodies the profound and visceral presence of one’s own hair. This space serves as an intimate
storehouse or morelike ‘storeforest’ where hair has a voice, embraces the mysteries of time and
treasures our emotional memory.
“Porque la cabellera de la mujer arranca desde lo más profundo y misterioso; desde
allí donde nace y tiembla la primera burbuja; que es desde allí que se desenvuelve,
lucha y crece entre muchas y enmarañadas fuerzas, hasta la superficie de lo vegetal,
del aire y hasta las frentes privilegiadas que ella eligiera.”
-"Because a woman's hair originates from the deepest and most mysterious place—
from where the first bubble is born and trembles. It is from there that it unfurls,
frays, and grows amid many tangled forces, until it reaches the surface of the
vegetal, the air, and the privileged foreheads she chooses."
Bombal, Maria Luisa. Trenzas. Seix Barral. 1940
By translating gestures done when manipulating hair into textile fibres, each soft sculpture is
curled into a gravity-defying, undulating structure. Celebrating the inherent texture of
untamed curly hair, the installation’s materiality expresses the mentioned gestures by Bombál,
‘unfurl’, ‘fray’ and ‘grow’ as silent yet powerful forces.
In this place, the visitor is called to confront their own relationship with hair—its role in shaping
identity and self-perception. Suggesting individuality within the collective, it invites
reflection on how each singular strand of hair hold’s the story of an individual—from their DNA
to the way their emotions are intertwined.