As part of the SIT-PLU (Situated Creative Practices for the Pluriverse) project, funded by the Creative Europe programme, NEBULA Laboratory researchers Anna Pujadas and Mar Saiz developed the Stitching the Trace laboratory during November and December 2025. Through collective embroidery on scrim fabric, the initiative explored how traces of experience can be transformed into shared memory, situated knowledge and artistic practices of care for the territory.
The laboratory explored the relationships between territory, memory, visual representation and collective care through shared embroidery following a pastoral walk. Participants worked with traces of their lived experience to transform them into forms of collective knowledge and creation.
The first practice involved transferring previously collected drawings onto a piece of scrim fabric that would later be reclaimed by the printmaking workshop. The use of this material, subsequently reused, prompted reflection on waste, the memory of materials and care, extending the life of a fabric marked by previous gestures and work. Through processes of contact, pressure and permeability, the drawings were transferred onto the textile surface as open-ended imprints rather than fixed representations. Participants then embroidered them collectively in a slow, repetitive process in which individual stitches gradually formed a shared surface.
Embroidery was approached as an activity without rigid hierarchies, guided by proximity, attentiveness and mutual support. Like a herd moving and acting together, participants coordinated their gestures around the fabric, transforming fragile traces into a communal textile piece. Threads and stitches thus became a way of sustaining and repairing these traces, incorporating time, memory and shared effort.