As the daughter of textile artist Marie Gnanaraj, Marisa grew up in a world where the presence of the loom directed the rhythm of life itself. Her work becomes its echo. Their first collaboration was in 2011 for her clothing collection ‘Juxta-Op’. Their collaborative exhibition titled Woven Structures – a collection of sartorial works was held in 2019 at the Barefoot Gallery. In 2017, their menswear collection ‘Horizon Infinity’ was nominated and shortlisted for Beazley Design of the Year and was exhibited at the London Design Museum.
Marisa loves working with hand made fabrics, notably hand woven fabrics, which then transform through her design practice in a slow unfolding of fabric into garment. Fabric ceases to be a passive material; there is a collaboration that takes place where she observes its innate behaviour as an integral starting point. Raw material is approached through a meticulous consideration of its own physical properties (weight, drape, weave, stretch), affecting a gentle shift in focus from what constitutes fabric to what one does with the fabric (cutting , folding, stretching, layering). Her work thus begins in conversation with the woven textile itself, asking what latent possibilities it contains.
Marisa works from her home studio based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. In 2012, she launched her independent design label M Fact, which retails at Barefoot.