This body of work began with experiments using twigs gathered from the garden around my studio. These early structures were fragile, irregular, and often resistant to bending or tension, but they introduced a question that continues throughout the work: how can individual linear elements accumulate into larger living systems?
Discovering Wooden Modelling Sticks
My proximity to architectural environments led me to discover the wooden modelling sticks used in architectural maquettes. Their precision, uniformity, and structural potential opened new possibilities within the work.
I began working with them in England, exploring how repetition, accumulation, and directional movement could generate form, tension, and spatial complexity.
The Introduction of Matchsticks
Later, while developing work for an exhibition in Brazil, I began experimenting with matchsticks, including their heads as part of the structure.
This shift transformed both the visual and conceptual reading of the work. The material introduced associations with fragility, combustion, impermanence, and latent energy, while maintaining the structural logic that continued to interest me.
I have also extended this investigation into bamboo skewers, continuing to test how simple linear materials can generate unexpectedly complex forms.
Accumulation, Tension and Structural Behaviour
This ongoing body of work explores different structural behaviours and spatial relationships through a series of sculptures.
Some appear serpentine or cellular, occupying space with an unstable, organic presence created through the accumulation of thousands of individual elements. Through repetition, density, and. directional force, these structures begin to behave less like static objects and more like living systems.
Relationship (2025)
The largest work in this series to date is Relationship (2025), a large-scale sculpture measuring 185 × 140 × 140 cm, constructed from approximately 60,000 wooden matchsticks and stainless steel.
The work was selected for The John Ruskin Prize 2026, an international multidisciplinary art prize presented at Trinity Buoy Wharf, London.
Fragility and Interdependence
Relationship explores tension, balance, fragility, and interdependence. Thousands of individual elements rely entirely upon one another to sustain the structure.
There is no hierarchy within the structure; stability emerges collectively through pressure, friction, accumulation, and connection. What begins as a simple linear unit gradually transforms into something spatial, unstable, organic, and unexpectedly alive.