A person with long brown hair falling over their shoulders. They are wearing a black v-neck sweater with a white collar. They are smiling, gazing directly forward.
Vanessa Mardirossian has worked as a textile designer for more than 20 years, in all sectors of fashion. Concerned about the environmental impact of the textile industry, she is conducting a doctoral research-creation that engages in an iterative dialogue between design, chemistry and environmental health, to reflect on a critical approach to textile materiality and to address complex social issues through the prism of graphics and color. Inspired by the way the natural world builds its own materials, at room temperature and without waste, her speculative exploration uses food waste to provide pigment-producing bacteria with the nutrients they need to develop a rich palette of hues. This path of inquiry, questioning the interconnection between the living and the material environment, has led her to develop a textile ecoliteracy, defined as an ecological culture in design. This concept, based on a better knowledge of the natural world, allows productions to respect the ecosystems, while promoting social and emotional engagement in support of sustainable design practices.

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Critical Practices in
Materials and Materiality
alice.jarry@concordia.ca