Selvedge Magazine, England

TWIST OF FATE

Hoegy uses rattan to create functional sculpture

by Juliette Sebille

Rattan is not wood – though it can be sanded and shaped with similar precision – but a climbing vine that grows wild in the jungle.

Stripped of its spiny bark and processed through a meticulous series of steps – including triple sanding – each stem is selected for its calibre and flexibility. Aurélie Hoegy works with diameters ranging from less than a centimetre up to four for structural parts, which require steaming to bend. « It has an incredible strength and sensitivity. » she says. « You have to listen to it. »

Breaking away from the beaten track of a quintessential Parisian bistro rattan chair, the French designer infuses her creative spirit into this natural material, bringing a touch of the wild. A graduate of the Design Academy Eindhoven, Hoegy is no stranger to experimentation. Her 2016 collection, Dancers, a series of phantasmagorical seats – part-object, part-hirsute animal, crafted from black cotton threads and latex – won two awards and became the centrepiece of a performance at the Palais de Tokyo.

Hoegy discovered rattan a few years ago and has used it ever since.

With movement as her starting point, she travelled to Indonesia to further her research into flexible materials. « In the wild, rattan is the Longest fore in existence, reaching up to 300 metres, twice as long as silk filiment – it’s incredible!? » she says. « I visited several workshops in Bali and spent over a month before choosing one where I made my first Wild Fibres rattan piece. In these small nomadic workshops, the craftsmen work barefoot and have a way of moving that is one with the fibre. » Working with rattan is, for Hoegy, as physical as it is conceptual, a practice rooted in movement and the tactile sensibility of textile-making.

« I never start with a fixed design, » she says. « The material guides me. » Like a fabric, rattan demands attention to flow, tension, and drape. The gestures are fluid and continuous, echoing the rhythm of weaving or sewing on a sculptural scale. Influenced by dance, the human body, and the language of garments, Hoegy engages with rattan as if it were a living textile that carries the memory of movement.

« I returned to France and pushed the technique to its limits, bringing a contemporary vision to this ancient craft, » she says. Hoegy has developed highly technical tools and structures to produce these pieces in her workshop near Paris. She draws inspiration from dance, the human body, hair, fashion, and textiles to work with rattan as if it were a fabric. « Everything is nailed down; it’s a bit like a giant sewing machine with thousands of needles, » she says.

Every piece is a new challenge with this material. » This is evident in her monumental Wild Fibre Tapestry (2023), her latest creation acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas. Sewn with 80,000 nails, its curved and complex form took almost a year. It’s a work that marks the return of craftsmanship in design.

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