Olga Olivares

Metabolization Protocol (in progress)

This installation is part of an ongoing artistic research project. It functions as a prototype of craft fiction — a method that combines material intelligence, embodied knowledge, and speculative futures.

It begins with a question:

What if decolonization began in the stomach, not in the archive?

What if a textile, upon migrating, transformed into edible matter?

What if textiles could be felt from within the body — tasted, inhaled, digested?

In this scenario, decolonization becomes a metabolic ritual. Communities gather to transform garments into edible material. Eating replaces owning. Museums host communal acts of ingestion instead of preservation. This work does not attempt to represent that future, but to test it through material, body, and interaction.

You are invited to approach, listen, and interact with the piece if you choose.

Edible Material composition:

Egg white, sugar, salt, black food coloring (Dr. Oetker), rice flour, rapeseed oil, water, cornstarch

Allergen notice:

Contains egg. May contain traces of gluten and other allergens due to processing and shared materials.

Liquid Feast delves into the intricate interplay between textiles, ceramics, and edibles within the timeless ritual of dining. This project, presented through an engaging eating performance, investigates the dynamic relationships among materials, creators, and eaters. By challenging conventional table settings, we introduce innovative ways of interacting with edibles, transforming it into a medium for communication and aesthetic expression.

Driven by curiosity and a desire for understanding, Liquid Feast explores how food can elevate the craft experience and serve as a bridge between the familiar and the unfamiliar. We aim to reshape perceptions of craftsmanship in contemporary society, highlighting the universal language of creation.

In a modern era marked by disconnection from the origins and makers of everyday objects, food emerges as a powerful medium to spotlight this issue. Liquid Feast invites participants to reconnect with the world of craftsmanship, encouraging contemplation and appreciation through a fresh and unconventional lens.

OBS is a multidisciplinary collective founded by Olga Olivares, Steph Orozco, and Berenice Hernández. We are dedicated to harnessing the transformative power of craft to inspire and drive change in today’s industrialized society. Through our innovative projects, we explore and celebrate the profound impact of traditional and contemporary craftsmanship on modern life.

This project stems from the concern to learn more about the species behind my favorite dishes and the curiosity to understand and question the actual relationship between humans and food. Our disconnection with nature is driving us closer to a dystopian reality and reminding us of the simplicity of life matters. Food is the primary source of human energy, it is what keeps us alive, and we have taken it for granted.

Don’t forget to eat slowly is a space to reflect, rethink, and revalue our relationship with edible species. Storytelling to create a contemporary food ritual to experience within a fictional scenario, a metaphor of human-nature negotiation. (2020)

[click the first image to see the video]

With this series I explored the construction of a basic comb to understand the possibilities of the shape and the material.

What if we disconnect to connect?

This is an exploration between reality and fantasy, tangible and intangible, handmade and machine-made. A tool to encourage people to take some time for introspection, inducing them to a light meditation through a multi-sensory experience. A bridge to imagine.

Video interpretation of two improvised sound pieces, recorded at Konstfack Research week in Node II: Listening, Imagining, Encountering, and Inventing the Aural. The sound production and the video shooting was an improvised performance too.

By Erik Vallbo, Olga Olivares, Franziska Bax

[From 2012 to 2018]

Innovative design studio based in Mexico City with a unique focus on social design. With an aesthetic that overlaps fashion and art, TALLER NU transcended mass consumption while crafting exceptional footwear and leather goods.

Through collaboration and social impact, we inspired a new business focus of ethical and sustainable fashion. Generating employment, training and teaching productive skills in a stigmatized sector such as the penitentiary population, we tackled the main problems inmates will face once they are released, avoiding possible recidivism.

TALLER NU was founded in 2012 by designers Olga Olivares and Pilar Obeso.

Our constant search to learn new techniques landed us in Oaxaca. With the meticulous hand of artist and designer Maddalena Forcella, we were able to immerse ourselves in the elusive world of natural dyes and ancestral textile techniques. Leather and Chamula wool, in addition to rich colors like indigo and yellow —that emerge from natural ingredients— are the central components of this new collection. (2017)

Beautiful objects that stimulate paradigm shift. These pieces rescue much of the artisan, while transforming the environment and the ways of consuming —and perceiving— the everyday.

In this collection, we reinterpreted some traditional patterns from Oaxaca and Chiapas and applied them to our numen essential boots with embroidered leather. (2014)

[photos by Gustavo García-Villa]

In this exercise, we explored the possibilities of different materials applied to our first shoe model. The work features cross-stitch embroidery in degraded tones to create more texture. The mixture of colors, materials and the environment in which the production took place gave rise to the title of Tropical NU. (2013)

[photos by Cuahutemoc García]

In this first shoe collection, we tested different types of embroidery on leather, tracing cross-stitching patterns that reference past embroideries from Venustiano Carranza and Zinacantán, Chiapas. (2012)

[photos by Cuauhtemoc García]

Filia, memories from Earth is a collection of soft accessories that reflect on the relationship between human beings and animals. The work’s main intention is to teach kids the importance of respect and admiration for every single living organism on the planet. This idea is driven by silhouettes that simulates bodies of various endangered species, creating playful products that encourage the imagination.

B.A Textile and Fashion Design final project, CENTRO, 2009.

Photo: Gregory Allen/ Models: Antaya & Kolyan/ Hair: Janis

3.6 kg refers to the total weight of 23 garments designed, dyed, and made during two months. Three different tones of grey were utilized, each piece of fabric representing an extension of the human body—the result: simple-cut silhouettes with unique and specific attention to detail. (2007)

Photos by Giovanni Cervantes / Model: Columba

Lacoste 12.12 is a philanthropy-based project that gathers a group of personalities from diverse cultural fields. It centers them around the subject of a crocodile as an artistic point of reference. (2007)