SUB TERRA

The SUB TERRA world, a concept built for entertainment and fantasy to be seen on stage. Project focus is creating textiles for costumes that fit into Cirque du Soleil’s visual expression. With different caves around the world as inspiration, the textiles and costumes were developed. The techniques used are hand & digitally printed textiles combined with foiling, embroidery and manipulation.    

In this project, I have been working with spandex materials that follow and fit the body for extreme movement. As Cirque du Soleil as the directions for the costumes, the goal was to get into their visual expression and to work with textile materials that could express the chosen concept.The concept of this project was the building of a performance, with it developing characters, scenography and a story behind the world Sub Terra. In the process, fourteen characters came forth and three chosen ones became the product of this project.

The three chosen characters are Syreni - The Cave Mermaid, Crystallo - The Crystal Fairy and Mineralium - The Mineral Goddess. With different techniques for each costume, they were developed as a part of Sub Terra. The techniques used are hand/digital printed, embroidery with crystals, manipulation through sewing and adding applications by sewing.

Process 

By developing the different characters for the world Sub Terra the main focus was to interpret and translate the pictures of my chosen visual inspiration, caves around the world. By looking at the screenshots of documentaries and clips about caves I worked with different materials to transfer the shapes, surfaces, and textures I saw in the pictures that later on in the process would be transferred into textiles. I wanted to embrace the visual expression of Cirque du Soleil but keep my artistic statement in the final result of the project.