The Portuguese Cultural Centre – Camões Luxembourg, as part of the “De Mains de Maîtres” Biennale, presents an exhibition that highlights a craft deeply rooted in Portuguese culture: empreita de palma (weaving with dwarf palm leaves). This tradition is one of the defining elements of the Algarve’s material culture, both for its uniqueness within the national context and for its close connection with the region’s natural environment. The use of a plant that grows spontaneously in the Algarve mountains — the dwarf palm (Chamaerops humilis) — combined with the traditional weaving technique, gives this craft a distinctive and original character.
Maria João Gomes was born in 1967 in Oeiras (Portugal), to parents from the Algarve. She has lived and worked in southern Portugal since 2010. Fascinated since childhood by the weaving of dwarf palm leaves (Chamaerops humilis), she defines herself as a sculptor of the plant world.
She founded her brand Palmas Douradas with the aim of reinventing this traditional craft through contemporary works and unique fashion accessories, thereby enhancing an ancestral know-how while exploring new techniques and abstract, poetic forms. She also collaborates with fashion designers to create bold and distinctive accessories that combine innovation and cultural memory.
Maria João masters every stage of the creative process — from harvesting the raw material in the Algarve mountains to drying, preparing, and weaving the palm leaves to shape them into her works.
Her creations represent an explosion of creativity and refinement, reflecting both the pride and respect she feels for the empreita de palma tradition of the Algarve and her desire to share it with the world.
TISSURES is an exhibition dedicated to the natural world, to material, and to the artisan’s gesture. In the works presented, artist Maria João Gomes uses dwarf palm leaves, combined with the traditional weaving technique, to create unique forms and textures that evoke both the exuberance and the complexity of nature, as well as its immense fragility. Through her creations, she expresses the lightness and fluidity of the plant world while maintaining a constant dialogue with the past.
