Atlas

Industrial designer Mariana Vieira carries the culture of Colombia in her veins and constantly reinterprets it in her work. Through her brand Atlas, she rescues, designs and produces everyday objects that represent local identities.

Mariana is based in Bogotá, Colombia.

Guajira Cósmica

The Guajira Cósmica series, produced in collaboration with the Wayúu community, was born out of a succession of nights that Mariana spent in Cabo de la Vela, northern Colombia. Each piece is a representation of the sacred geometry of the cosmos designed through an ancestral technique developed by the community, especially by the artisan Cecilia Acosta. The technique is known as tapiz gualdrapa – a form of weaving on a locally made horizontal loom with cotton threads and a 2-hole wooden needle.

"Many of the geometric patterns found in nature are repeated in the micro and the macro, and it is precisely this geometric abstraction that I seek to represent in each design. Sacred geometry is related to the masculine and the feminine. The concrete and the logical. The ethereal and the spatial. In this work, the western and the Wayúu worldviews merge.”

The Wayúu community are an indigenous group that inhabits the Guajira peninsula. This matriarchal community lives surrounded by a landscape of undulating desert dunes, clear starry nights and sparkling blue sea. They maintain a permanent dialogue with their origins. For them, to weave is to capture information from the cosmos and reinterpret it with apparent simplicity in a complex design.