A Spanish artist brings embroidery to the streets

An embroiderer in Spain takes her craft to the pavement.
Raquel Rodrigo, an artist from Valencia, argues that the giant cross-stitch pieces she has put on buildings are a statement of a feminine art.

Raquel Rodrigo's street art has a familiar feel to it, whether it's a bouquet of yellow flowers wrapped around a window in Spain or thousands of pink roses falling down a home in Switzerland.

The Spanish artist has been touring cities throughout the world for the better part of a decade, bringing her distinctive aesthetic and a technique dating back thousands of years out of obscurity.

Rodrigo stated, "It's the needlework that ladies have always done at home on linens, towels, and pillows." We want to parade throughout town with our embroidered banners.
To do this, she carefully mimics the craft's characteristic features—the vivid flowers, straight lines, and raised textures—on a massive scale and puts them on everything from stairwells to storefronts.

Rodrigo remarked that the result is a style that strives to live in the murky space between the public and the private by putting something as intimate as a home's needlework in the spotlight.

The Valencian artist came up with the concept in 2011 when she was commissioned to decorate the façade of a Madrid shop that offered sewing lessons. As she tried to find out how to illustrate the store's mission, her mind drifted back to a cross-stitching technique she had learned from her mother when she was a child.

She developed a pattern of red roses falling down the front of the building with the help of a computer. She then printed out a pixelated design to follow and carefully sewed it onto a metal mesh that was affixed to the storefront.

The move immediately became her hallmark. As her project Arquicostura, which is a Spanish portmanteau of architecture and sewing, carried her to locations like London, Istanbul, and Philadelphia, individuals from all around the world gave her letters of support.

Some individuals found things in her paintings that reminded them of their childhood, while others were reminded of their grandmothers and moms. The wider meaning of the work was made evident by how often women were referenced. The 38-year-old added, "Over time, I recognized that this was a method to affirm a female art that had been concealed for a long time."

Her workshop in Valencia is based on the lessons that have been passed down via her family for generations. Depending on the subject, she works with groups of up to 50 people to construct large-scale reproductions of delicate embroidery.

The procedure takes a long time; it can take up to three days for two individuals to embroider one square meter. Her mother sometimes helps out in the workshop. This is a tribute to the wisdom she passed on to her children when she was attempting to keep them busy decades ago.

Rodrigo has traveled all over the world for years, and every time he sees how her craft can help people get along, she is amazed. "Four years ago, I was in a town in Russia. The individuals there didn't speak English, so we couldn't chat to each other." Instead, the needlework, stitches, and yarn did most of the job, connecting people from diverse cultures and languages. "We learned that we could work together even if we didn't all speak the same language." When the project was complete, she was offered hugs and tears as she departed. She added, "It felt like magic to be able to communicate so much with stitching." "It really is a language spoken all over the world."