Estefanía Parra

In I Carry the House Entangled in Sheep Wool and Banana Fiber, Estefanía Parra transforms banana fiber into a vulnerable yet resilient extension of the human body. Suspended between textile, membrane, and organ, the piece assumes a soft and visceral form that simultaneously recalls a nest, an open wound, or a structure of containment. The combination of sheep wool and vegetal fiber creates a hybrid surface in which the domestic and the organic become intertwined, while the tensioned strands evoke tendons, roots, or exposed nervous systems. Here, the banana ceases to appear as fruit or tropical emblem and instead becomes corporeal matter: a fiber charged with memory, labor, and physical exhaustion.

The work centers on migrant experience and on the impossibility of fully detaching oneself from one’s place of origin. Parra imagines home not as a stable architecture, but as an emotional burden carried on the body, “entangled” around the belly and ribs. The knots and dense accumulations of material suggest sedimented histories, bonds difficult to unravel, and processes of adaptation marked by weight and precarity. In this sense, banana fiber functions as a material archive of displacement, invisible labor, and attempts to take root within unfamiliar or unstable environments.

Through felting and knotting techniques that require tension, friction, and sustained manual care, the artist also foregrounds the processual dimension of textile labor. The final softness of the piece does not conceal the violence implicit in the transformation of the fiber, but instead preserves it as a latent trace. The work thus reflects on the ways migrant bodies negotiate resistance and fragility, turning organic and everyday materials into structures of shelter, memory, and survival.