Laura Luchtman (Kukka)

science & technology , textile , riso print , Publication , mural , international , installation , glass art , Design , Conceptual , Artistic research , Abstract

Read aloud

Choosing color is never neutral. This insight began in fashion. There, I saw that color, just like material and pattern, carries cultural, ecological, and social charges alongside its beauty. These three dimensions are the core of my fascination. I investigate what lies hidden in what we see every day. What remains unnoticed, or is even not fully perceptible? This takes shape in projects on, among other things, bacterial pigments and color blindness.

My work emerges at the intersection of textiles, printmaking, and material research. I reinterpret artisanal techniques while simultaneously seeking out the manual within industrial processes. This creates a continuous interplay between tradition and innovation. In this way, I create layered, abstract compositions in which pattern, texture, and color form a harmony, where the image conceals as much as it reveals. With this, I invite you not only to look, but to see differently.

**Chromarama** - Jacquard woven tapestries, 2021. Chromarama consists of five tapestries that start from a question rarely asked: what does it mean to perceive color differently from the majority? The work focuses on various forms of color blindness, which affects 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women, and makes visible how fundamentally perception can differ between people. In collaboration with a peer group of colorblind participants, compositions were created in which the visual language remains recognizable to everyone, regardless of how the viewer's eye processes color. In this way, visibility itself becomes the subject of the work, and a limitation often overlooked within visual disciplines is made the starting point of the composition. Chromarama was nominated for the Dezeen Awards 2021 (Best Homeware Design) and the Isola Design Awards 2022 (Best Textile Design). The project was developed in collaboration with the TextielLab, with support from the Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie and Stichting Stokroos.

**Chromarama 2.0** - Embroidery, 2022. As smaller-scale counterparts to three tapestries from the Chromarama series, these embroidered works bring the same exploration of perception back to a more intimate scale. The sheen of the yarn adds an extra layer: with changing light, optical illusions arise that make the composition literally move before the eye. Color, form, and texture are so precisely aligned that every composition remains legible regardless of the viewer's form of color blindness, with each work taking its own specific type of color blindness as a starting point. The works were created in collaboration with the colorblind embroidery artist Tegendraads. With thanks to: Makersloket of Stichting Droom en Daad.

**Chromarama Riso** - Risography, 2023. With only two or three ink colors, printed layer by layer, Chromarama Riso creates shades that transcend the simple palette. The series translates the research of the Chromarama series into a new medium: each print is a color and form study tailored to a specific type of color blindness, ensuring the composition remains legible regardless of how the viewer perceives color. In this way, the work utilizes the limited means of the risograph technique precisely as a precision instrument, making invisible differences in perception visible. Chromarama Riso aligns with the broader goal of the series: drawing attention to the role of visual impairments, an aspect often overlooked within design. The work received the DNA Paris Award 2023 for Best Graphic Design.

**Blended Fibers** - Self-published art publication, 2024 - 2025. Blended Fibers starts from a perspective normally reserved for archaeology, criminology, and materials science: that of the fiber itself, down to the level of cross-section and filament. What began as an exploration of textiles through a digital lens shifted into a fascination with this invisible architecture, now translated into a tangible visual language. Six types of fibers are mapped out via layered patterns, digital representations, and abstract studies. The result is an artist's publication in a hand-numbered edition of 70 copies, in which textile research converges with a sculptural approach to image construction. Blended Fibers is both a reflection on the material properties of textiles and an invitation to view fabric not as a surface, but as structure, system, and story. Realized thanks to the Bouwen aan Talent scheme of the Creative Industries Fund, in collaboration with Sonia Górecka.

**The Manifestation of Shape** - Khiyamiyya (traditional Egyptian appliqué), 2024-2025. Created during a four-day workshop in the heart of Cairo, at the invitation of Megawra, this work explores how architectural patterns allow themselves to be reinterpreted over time. By shifting lines, colors, negative spaces, and materials, it becomes visible where the original essence of a pattern ends and something new begins. In doing so, the work questions the boundaries of authenticity and the influence of contemporary adaptations on Cairo's visual heritage, and shows how a pattern can continue to carry meaning, even when the form itself changes. With thanks to: the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Egypt.

**Analog Eco** - Screen print, 2021. Analog Eco starts from a characteristic often perceived as a shortcoming: natural colors are unstable; they discolor and fade over time. Instead of avoiding this, the work embraces that instability as a starting point. The inks are made from foraged materials and bacterial pigments, with natural binders and pH manipulation to control the color, partly sourced from spring flowers containing toxic components—a choice that questions the assumption that natural equates to harmless or superior. The nine-part installation displays the same ink and technique in ever-changing compositions on textiles and paper, where the color gradually fades from the top-left corner to almost complete absence in the bottom-right. In this way, fading itself becomes part of the composition, and change a visible, controlled element rather than a flaw. The installation is complemented by a research book. Realized for the biennial Analog Festival of the Grafische Werkplaats in The Hague.

**Threads of Allegory** - Yūzen on silk, 2025. Threads of Allegory emerged from a one-month research residency in Kyoto, undertaken for the 2025 World Expo in Osaka, which centered on Japanese dyeing and embroidery traditions for noren flags and kimonos. Eleven studios and factories were visited to study weaving, embroidery, and dyeing practices, ranging from centuries-old to contemporary. Inspired by samplers and ceremonial flags, graphic studies were created in which layers of color, wax, and stitches alternate, and in which texture, process, and the interplay of hues remain visible as traces of the hand that created them. With thanks to: Knotto, the European Union, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Japan.

**Soft / Solid** - Mouth-blown glass, 2023. Soft/Solid emerged from an intense collaboration with a master glassblower during a week-long residency in Sweden, entirely dedicated to fathoming the craft and the interplay of color in molten matter. The work explores the unexpected kinship between glass and textiles: both demand precision and surrender simultaneously, and both only reveal color fully when light passes through or reflects off them. Shades appear in the glass that feel simultaneously soft and solid, transparent and opaque, whereby the title names a tension that remains palpable in every piece. That same tension between softness and solidity recurs in the rug displayed alongside the glasswork: here, the transparency, play of light, and opacity of the glass are translated into another material, as if the feeling of one medium has been transferred to the other.

Wall painting — **Muurschildering** - Wall Paint, 2019. Geometric planes and bright hues form the basis of this work, in which color is exploratory. Building on the color studies of Josef Albers, the painting explores how shades influence one another once placed side by side: some combinations clash, others reinforce each other, and the eye registers shifts that do not actually exist. By enlarging this composition to wall size, the observer becomes part of the space in which the color plays out. The mural is located in my studio in De Wasserij, Rotterdam.

Living Color — **Living Colour** - Bacterial pigment on silk and cotton, 2017. Living Colour allows color to emerge from life itself. In collaboration with Ilfa Siebenhaar, I grew pigment-producing bacteria directly on fabric, meaning the color was not applied but produced by an organism. In this way, the work questions the boundary between nature and the making process: every pattern is the outcome of a living system that cannot be fully controlled, with gradients and nuances that neither the maker nor the bacteria can predict beforehand. Textile thus becomes a surface on which biological time becomes visible. Living Colour has been shown in exhibitions and press worldwide, and has been discussed at international lectures and TEDxRotterdam. Since 2018, the project has been part of the Biology and Medical Laboratory Research curriculum at Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, where students contribute to the research that began in 2016.

Artisanal Intelligence

Date: 04-06-2026 t/m 21-06-2026

Location: Maison Hannon

In association with: Knotto

The internationally touring exhibition Artisanal Intelligence is now on view at Maison Hannon during the New European Bauhaus Festival. Kukka's contribution arose from a residency in Japan, where she collaborated with Tsuyoshi Kato of a traditional textile studio in Kyoto. This intercultural collaboration forms the core of her work in the exhibition.

Artisanal Intelligence

Date: 09-04-2026 t/m 02-05-2026

Location: Art Museum Riga Bourse

In association with: Knotto

The internationally touring exhibition Artisanal Intelligence is now on view in the Bosse Hall of the Kunstmuseum Riga Bourse. Kukka's contribution arose from a residency in Japan, where she collaborated with Tsuyoshi Kato of a traditional textile studio in Kyoto. This intercultural collaboration forms the core of her work in the exhibition.

https://lnmm.gov.lv/en/art-museum-riga-bourse/exhibitions/artisanal-intelligence-583

This artist has no awards yet.