Vanessa Barragão
Artists & Curators · Europe“Working from Porto since founding her studio in 2014, Vanessa Barragão builds tapestries from recycled yarn — textile art with an environmental conscience, shown as recently as Expo 2025 Osaka.”
Why Vanessa Barragão is in the Design 100
Vanessa Barragão founded her Porto studio in 2014, turning to textiles for what the industry usually discards. Working largely with deadstock and recycled yarns sourced from Portugal’s northern textile mills, she folds crochet, weaving, knitting, felting and hand-tufting into a single practice, building sculptural tapestries and rugs that read as coral reefs and coastal landscapes rendered in fibre rather than paint — craft with an explicit environmental brief behind it.
That environmental grounding has carried the work well beyond Portugal, with pieces shown in Sydney, Taipei, New York and at London Heathrow. In 2025 she represented Portugal at Expo Osaka, presenting work from her ocean-themed Picos series and performing the tapestry “Oceano: The First Threads” inside the Portugal Pavilion designed by Kengo Kuma. It is that rare pairing of genuine craft discipline and a clear sustainability argument that earns Barragão her place in this index.