Intricate Rope Installations Unravel to Create Webs of Organic Forms

Ciclotramas Rope Art Organic Installation Janaina Mello Landini

For years, artist Janaina Mello Landini has captivated us with her collection of Ciclotramas. Inspired by forms found in nature, this ongoing series of intricate rope installations continues to creatively transform “an object of the everyday world” into an exquisite artistic medium.

Like her past Cyclotramas, Landini’s newer cord creations feature twisted and tangled ropes attached to walls and canvases. As the brightly-colored, tightly-wound cables unravel, they adopt the appearance of organic shapes reminiscent of intertwined tree branches, dense river deltas, and complex networks of veins.

While the material used to create the installations is not itself ephemeral, each configuration formed by the rope is intended to “unstitch time from the inside.” This phenomenon visually represents the fluidity of time, which the artist describes as “an unrepeatable–and continually changing–creative moment.”

Ciclotrama 50, one of the most recent additions to the organic sculpture series, is permanently on-view at the Fondation Carmignac in Porquerolles, an island in the south of France. If you can’t make it to Côte d’Azur to visit this exhibition, you can check out Landini’s work on her website.