H(a)unting Textiles: Spotlight on Ayane Fujioka’s Designs |

Think your average textile designer is a reclusive artist, solitarily creating in a dusty workshop, while listening to some quiet music in the background? Well, think twice, at least in the case of Ayane Fujioka.

This second year student from the BA (Hons) Textile Design for Fashion and Interiors course at Bath Spa University has recently published photographs of her textile collection.

Despite delicately portraying her soft toned designs as modelled by a young woman among flowers, a quick look at the background images that Fujioka used as inspiration conjures up visions of bloody scenes from "Penny Dreadful" rather than quiet days in a weaver's workshop.

Fujioka's main inspiration for this collection was indeed anatomy and in particular the insides of animals. Yet rather than just leafing through books, visiting medical institutions or asking butchers, she assisted a friend who hunts for his food (and not for money) dissecting a wild deer.

Though you may think that muscles, lungs, intestines and blood vessels may not have much in common with textiles, once you juxtapose the images of the dissecting process to the yarns, colours, patterns and textures created by Fujioka you realise there is a strong link between them.

Think this is a bit too gruesome and extreme? Once again you may be wrong: Fujioka's process allowed her to discover the importance of nature and of the rhythms of life, elements she evoked when she opted to mainly employ shades made from vegetable natural dyes.

The young designer hopes she will be able to reach out and touch the heart of the people who will one day wear or own one of her designs, filling their hearts with positive vibes. If the future of fashion and design is in the hands of such creative minds, maybe there's still hope in these industries.

Can you tell us more about your background?
Ayane Fujioka: I am from Osaka, Japan. I attended the School of International Liberal Arts at Waseda University, Tokyo, where I had a chance to study different disciplines such as photography, cultural interaction in art and biological psychology. I am currently in the second year of the BA (Hons) Textile Design for Fashion and Interiors course at Bath Spa University, specialising in dobby weaving, but I also do wet/digital print and hand/Irish machine embroidery, depending on what I want to achieve in each project. I am going to graduate next summer.

What fascinates you about the world of textiles?
Ayane Fujioka: The fact that they can always be around people and therefore can affect people's emotions. Either as fashion or interior pieces, textiles are always beside you. They can be your quiet friends and they can ooze a sort of protective, calming or encouraging power. Another aspect I like about textiles is their ability to connect different people, ideas, times and cultures and accumulate narratives within them.

Which was the starting point for this collection of textiles?
Ayane Fujioka: A friend of mine started hunting wild animals for food as a lifestyle choice when he was 21. I was interested in his attitude and respect towards nature, and started taking a series of documentary photographs of him in February 2014. I visited him again in December 2015, and my experience and photographs taken there were the main inspiration for this collection.

I know you went as far as assisting your friend in dissecting a wild deer: did you find this process challenging, scary or gruesome?
Ayane Fujioka: It might be scary if you only think about killing animals and dissecting them, but it was just a part of the whole process of hunting. Two years ago, I dissected a chicken from a battery farm for the first time with my friend's help. It was terribly horrifying to look how thousands of chickens were trapped without freedom in the lines of cages in the farm. To butcher one of them was challenging, but I wanted to do it by myself to know the real meaning of "eating" the chicken. Since then, I have witnessed or assisted hunting and dissecting of a wild boar, ducks and a deer. I discovered that my friend hunts wild animals with respect and thankfulness and I learnt about their nature, habit and the environment as well. It is sustainable to eat considered numbers of some wild animals that are overpopulating certain areas because of the extinction of their predators. After taking all possible meat and other parts of the animal bodies, my friend usually brings the rest of the carcass back to a suitable place in the mountains so that other animals or microorganisms can feed off them. Looking at the whole process, I did not find the dissection either scary or gruesome. It was to learn how a life is constructed, and its beauty moved me. For example, I have never seen such a beautiful red as that of the lungs of a wild boar, nor the amazing colour combination of a deer's pale green stomach with dark pink blood vessels.

What kind of materials did you use to recreate the textures of muscles/organs?
Ayane Fujioka: I chose relatively thick yarns and wove them in various structures to recreate the experience of touching and feeling the volumes of muscles and organs. Banana silk yarn was suitable to represent the smooth and glossy quality of the wet organs. The undulating and curving form of intestines was translated into the twisting loops of cotton chenille yarn. I partly used wool/mohair yarn dyed in a pink-red shade to recall the textures of the fur and meat you touch when parting the skin from muscles.

What about colours, did you develop your own natural dyes for this collection?
Ayane Fujioka: To make the uneven colours with subtle differences, the weft yarns were all dip dyed in several baths of natural dyes, and the warp yarns were painted with them. I used madder, logwood, weld, alkanet, carrot leaves and bay tree leaves. Among them, the carrot leaves were from a local farm and the bay tree leaves were from my neighbour's garden. I would like to try more local findings in future projects.

Did you do your researches on books or also visited specific medical institutions while working on this collection?
Ayane Fujioka: The Wellcome Collection in London was an interesting place to visit. The exhibitions were interactive, and the reading room had a very open atmosphere. I looked at some books about anatomy, and among them The Sick Rose: the Disease and the Art of Medical Illustration by Richard Barnett (Thames and Hudson, 2014) was inspiring with delicate illustrations of human bodies and organs in softly faded tones.

What would you like to become after you graduate? Would you like to work more on interior design projects or on fashion collections?
Ayane Fujioka: I would like to work as a textile designer-maker, ideally for my own small workshop. I want to take a complete journey into the art of making things, creating the materials by myself or in collaboration with others who may have traditional skills or who may come up with innovative ideas/techniques. I want my products to stay with someone on my behalf and inspire in them positive feelings. I am fascinated by the idea of making fashion accessories because they could be with their users on many different occasions, but I do not really mind the category of fashion or interiors as long as my works can be close to people and have positive effects on them. I am also interested in making bespoke items to order. Currently I am stitching a wedding sign for a couple, meanwhile I'm involved in an art project for a hospital. My brand, which is in a conceptual stage at the moment, is named IBAMOTO HONTEN. It comes from the name of a pub my grandmother used to run. I was a little child, but I remember how people came to talk and laughed with her. I am not pouring beer, but I want to make people feel better in my own way.