Gelata Creature is conceived out of a material research during the 3-month residency programme TaDA – Textile and Design Alliance in 2025, engaging with Eastern Switzerland’s rich textile heritage, in collaboration with local textile partners.

Extending the ongoing exploration of hydrogels, this piece integrates traditional St. Gallen embroidery and rare, currently out-of-fashion fabrics as a gesture towards reviving the often overlooked legacy of a once-prosperous textile industry. It brings together scientific knowledge with a sustainable approach to textile coatings and membranes. With a bespoke hydrogel recipe made largely from ocean-derived polymers and biomaterials, Gelata Creature takes its cues from the fluid shapes and movements of gelatinous life in the ocean.

Playing with gravity, the piece incorporates copper as a structural element that can support and dialogue with the transparency and softness of the hydrogel. Furthermore, when in contact with a hydrogel, copper begins to develop an oxidative process, aesthetically revealing a fascinating range of blues and greens within a certain period of time, ultimately resembling an aquatic gel-like creature.

Gelata is an artistic research project that has departed from the sheer characteristics of slime: wet, sticky, transparent, elastic. Gel, mucus and slime share similar characteristics; physically, scientifically and poetically. Slime has been present in the very essence of life, from the primordial ooze to today’s possible gooey dominance ushered by climate catastrophe. Slime holds/protects/nurtures/guides/connects not only an organism in relation with its environment, but it is a viscosity between the past and the present.

This research is a unique artistic endeavour that aims to invite a poetic remembrance of our symbiotic kinship with aquatic ecosystems on a deep-time geo- and biochemical scale.

• – Cooperation partners: Textildruckerei Arbon, Empa, Stiftung Sitterwerk, Filtex AG
• – Technical support: Carlo Crovato
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