Coiled fishing rope sculptures by Joana Schneider twist organic shapes into otherworldly shapes – colossal

a symmetric pink coiled wall sculpture

When Joana Schneider moved to The Hague, she started visiting the beach regularly. After spending her childhood in Munich, the sea was a novel and a fertile source of inspiration. Soon the fishermen working in the harbor caught her attention.

“There was something so intriguing about their world, which seemed to straddle the line between rough work and delicate artistry,” Schneider tells Colossal. “They used knotting techniques, traditionally seen as feminine and delicate, but on a much larger scale, with heavy ropes.”

a large-scale circular sculpture of coiled rope in red, white and blue
“Shine On You Crazy Diamond” (2024)

The artist soon connected what the fishermen created with the traditions of textile art and began collecting their leftover rope. Now based on
KNSM Island in Amsterdam, Schneider continues to use sailor material in her large-scale sculptures. “I spend days untangling the nets before I can start working on them. Then I dry the ropes in the sun, which gives them an ocean scent,” she adds.

Once dried out, the materials often become the structure for thin, colorful yarn that the artist wraps around the strands. The completed works are sometimes abstract and others powerfully figurative, depicting exaggerated facial features in rolled, hand-stitched patchwork.

The process is labor intensive, but the slow, methodical movements are part of what Schneider is drawn to. “Each turn of the yarn around the rope is a calm, concentrated action. There’s something very earthy about it. The rhythm of the winding, the gentle tension of the yarn and the soft texture of the fibers create a peaceful space where the world outside seems to fade away,” she says. The resulting works contain evidence of this painstaking process, in which large and small coils swell outward in perfectly concentric circles.

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Schneider is currently working on a solo exhibition titled Alien which opens in April in the Groningen Museum in the Netherlands. Blurring the line between the real and the fantastic, the project builds on the artist’s fascination with hybridity and includes a performative element, a harbinger of where her practice is headed. She shares:

When I think of the natural world, I often think of the Renaissance tradition of grotesque art. It fascinates me how artists of that period mixed human, animal and plant forms in complicated ways… The result is a hybrid environment that is at once familiar and strange. That’s something I try to achieve in my work: a sense of wonder and a bit of disorientation, as if you’re entering a place where the boundaries of the natural world are deliberately blurred.

Schneider’s sculptures are currently on display at the FITE Textile Biennale in Clermont-Ferrand, France, and will be included in a group exhibition at the König Galerie in Munich in 2025. Until then, you can find more of her work her website And Instagram.

a side view of a coiled insect-like sculpture made of rope wrapped in yarn in shades of pink
“Sugarfly” (2024)
a detail image of coiled rope wrapped with different shades of pink yarn
Detail from “Sugarfly” (2024)
a large-scale face made of coiled rope dotted with blue and red
“Freckles” (2022)
a detail image of a large-scale circular sculpture of coiled rope in red, white and blue
Detail from “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” (2024)
a round abstract sculpture of green, yellow and pink, yarn-wrapped, coiled rope in different thicknesses
Light Child” (2023)
a detail image of green, yellow and pink, yarn-wrapped, coiled rope in different thicknesses
Detail from “Lichtkind” (2023)
a large-scale facial sculpture made from coiled pieces of natural rope
“The good farmer” (2023)
two coiled sculptures of red and pink rope on pedestals with winding wall works behind them
Series “Red and Blue Iris Wave” (2022). Photo by Pim Top



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