Usoa weaves, knits and stitches then folds and installs, creating textile sculptures to reflect on her motherhood experience. She also paints surreal stories to express her motherly thoughts and feelings. Whilst a keen researcher, her work is impulsive and largely based on her personal experience exploring women as life-vessels, as well as their undervalued world-shaping potential as nurturers of future generations. Motherhood themes she has tackled include: mother earth, renewal, fertility, spirituality and legacy; the manufactured mother-figure, domesticity and the private versus public divide; unpaid labour; and the mother-infant bond with mother as a crucial provider of both roots and wings. Her main materials are yarn, fibres, wire and recycled fabrics as well as oil paint, pencil and Posca pens. Her principal tools are a domestic knitting machine, a rigid-heddle loom, a sewing machine, crochet hooks, needles and brushes. Her latest work focuses on poems, paintings and Peponas (textile dolls). Inspired by a poetry workshop by Leo Boix, she chooses motherhood words in her native language which inspire paintings, at the centre of which lays always a ‘mother-vessel’ which she then knits, weaves and stitches as a textile sculpture. Usoa is a graduate from the Royal College of Art, recipient of a Coats’ scholarship, and founder of Castello 6668 Collective which curates emerging talent exhibitions in central London around the themes Woman, Vessel, World. She is originally Spanish but based in London, holds a Biochemistry BA from Corpus Christi, Oxford and a previous career in pharmaceutical investing.
Exhibitions & Articles
Upcoming - The Hand that Rocks, 67 York Street Gallery, Marylebone, 25-29 March 2026
Mothers & Mothering throughout the Life Course article, Spring/Fall 2025 Vol. 16 p. 153
Textiles Festivals, Royal College of Art Battersea, 17-19 July
House of Haberdash, Torriano Meeting House London, June-August 2025
all love begins and ends here, Royal College of Art Kensington, 24-28 March 2025
Tekhne, Royal College of Art Kensington, 19-22 March 2025
Veridical, LumiNoir Art Gallery, KOPPEL project NW1 8BB, 24 February - 5 March 2025
je m'amuse, RuptureXIBIT, Hampton Wick, 11-25 September 2024 (SOLO show)
Murmuration, J/M Gallery Portobello Rd, 15-21 May 2024
Artnumber23 Prague, 19-24 April 2024
LumiNoir Art, Espacio Gallery Bethnal Green London, 19-25 February 2024
S B Art Gallery, Unit 10 The Archives, N15 London, 9-11 February 2024
The Dark Side, Boomer Gallery, Tower Bridge London, 9-14 February 2024
Cosmic -The Holy Art, Dalston London (Dec 2023)