Katrina Wilde

Katrina is an artist and facilitator based in Stoke-on-Trent, working with plant and mineral colour. She mostly works collaboratively, acting as a bridge between the plant world, people and communities; reigniting curiosity and care for the natural world - of which we are a part.

Her work is anchored in the knowledge that everything is connected. She believes in the power of intimacy, looking to enable people to reconnect with the rhythms and rituals of nature through colour, materials and process. Sharing perspectives and facilitating space for people to play is central to her work.

She is currently working with the Portland Inn Project, Spode Rose Garden and local schools delivering workshops and participatory programs, and has recently been commissioned by the Materials Science Research Centre (RCA). She runs and shares a textile design and making studio with her sister, Wilde Studio.

Katrina’s work intersects across public and community engagement, education, research, fashion, materials, storytelling and performance.

Recollect // To remember, to gather, to bring knowledge together. 

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Всичко ново е забравено старо (Everything New is Forgotten Old)

Tacit, embodied knowledge is embedded in each of us, passed on through hands, mouths, generations of kin. The old ways become new ways become old and new again, in a continuous cyclical process. The exchange of knowledge that happens between people continues this cycle. Nothing old, nothing new. Material becomes a bridge and a non-verbal language between one another.

Всичко ново е забравено старо (Everything New is Forgotten Old) is something my grandma said to me recently, as we were looking through some of mine and my sister's textile work, recollecting her own memories of her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother working with textiles, plants and healing.

This work is a collaboration between my maternal grandmother, Nadezhda, and myself. In a fragmented archive, I document her recipes for healing, stories of women in our family and ways of being, translating them into colour for cloth, explored through deconstructed traditional Bulgarian garments. I share these fragmented recipes with you.

Our future is embedded in our knowledge of the past. I hope this work can act as an invitation to deepen the intimate relationships we have; between one another, extending into community, place and into the material world.

Portrait by Rita Silva.