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The work of Janaina Mello Landini is divided into several series, each exploring a distinct facet of networks, time, and materiality. From the iconic Ciclotrama unravelings to site-specific interventions, each series builds its own visual vocabulary while remaining connected to a deeper inquiry into the architectures that shape our world.
Ciclotrama
and its unfoldings
The thread as a unit
The thread comes to be understood as a singular element that, at the same time, belongs to a larger system emerging from the interactions between the parts—not from their sum. From this starting point, it becomes possible to build complexity—not through arbitrary accumulation, but through unfolding.
Ciclotrama:
a language of infinity
It is from this need for flow that the concept of Ciclotrama arises—a term coined by the artist to designate a cyclical weave that tends toward infinity.
Inspired by Benoît Mandelbrot, the principle is simple: to apply a repetition algorithm to threads. Initially, binary bifurcation—dividing into two, and again into two—organizes the expansion of a form that grows as it advances. This process echoes recurring patterns in
nature's fluid dynamics: tree branches, vascular systems, river courses.
More recently, the artist has incorporated a subtraction algorithm (-1), in which the structure loses one thread at a time, introducing a different logic. Instead of expanding, the arms taper as they advance.
Here, however, the algorithm is not merely an abstract model: it is tensioned by matter. Each deviation—tension, torsion, traction, weight, time, and transformation— ceases to be external and becomes part of the system itself, interfering with the result and ensuring that repetition is never identical to itself. The structure tends toward infinity, yet always manifests within the field of variation.
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