Though textiles were first crafted in South America millennia ago, fiber arts from the areas surrounding present-day Peru and beyond have remained anything but static. Today, contemporary Latino/a artists reweave past traditions into internationally celebrated works of art, while practicing “traditional” weaving offers a livelihood as well as a way of maintaining cultural heritage for artists working in textile collectives. COLLECTIVE MEMORY fills a gallery that does not exist with artworks that will never meet—spanning from an extant Paracas textile to contemporary responses to the same ancient tradition from thousands of years in the future. Rather than an exhibition, this digital collection of objects functions as a nexus, a hub of potential connections across cultural and historical boundaries.
Peru, Paracas, Clothing fragment with Pampas Cats, ca. 100 B.C.E.-100 C.E.
The rise of “Primitivism” and its following appropriations of “non-Western” art throughout the early twentieth century ensures that South American art may have already held a foothold in the minds of modern and contemporary artists—though one which stripped them of their original context and transformed them from othered “artifact” to “fine art.” The modernists of America and Europe frequented places like the now-closed Musee d’Ethnographie du Trocadero in Paris, or the former Museum of the American Indian in New York City, where items like this Paracas textile—itself perhaps first excavated in the 1920s—would have caught their eye with its simple on eye-catching geometric form, and the bright colors. The Age of Enlightenment conception of the “noble savage”—an individual untouched, unspoiled by the capitalistic advents of the industrial revolution and Western society—reemerged in the arts, as items that offered a purer expression of emotion that appealed to Fauves and Abstract Expressionists alike.
Maximo Laura, Abstract and Figurative Textiles, 21st century.
A viewer educated in the European and American modernist tradition might, upon a blind first perusal of Maximo Laura’s works, ground him within those same traditions—comparing the vibrant colors and fascinating forms of his art to Kandinsky or Matisse. Yet Laura’s widely acclaimed textiles, displayed in exhibitions and collections across the globe, take their sources from both the ancient past and the thriving weaving tradition in which he was raised. Perhaps the best encapsulation of Laura’s ties to contemporary weaving practices in Peru is his recent status as a UNESCO “Living Human Treasure,” an award granted in recognition of his commitment to promoting and celebrating the arts of his culture and country.
The “Pre-Columbian Textiles” Collection at LIMAC
The Museo de arte contemporaneo de Lima (LiMAC) began in 2002 as an iterant museum that responded to a lack of recognition of contemporary art traditions in the Peruvian museum world. Existing both in a virtual space and in cities worldwide through traveling exhibitions, this museum-in-motion founded by Sandra Gamarra even includes a “pre-Columbian” collection among its holdings of modern and contemporary art. In fact, these “objects” are part of a series of works on paper, How Contemporary Is My Past? by Gamarra herself. Reinterpreted in oil paint, these pre-Columbian-inspired works make the parallels between ancient techniques and modern abstraction all the more apparent—and could be interpreted as a way of inserting what is dismissed as “craft” into the contemporary art world.
Kay Sekimachi, Echoes of the Andes, 2011.
The Textile Museum’s (Washington, D.C.) 2012 exhibition Sourcing the Museum initiated cross-temporal, multicultural dialogue by pairing contemporary artists with extant textiles from the museum’s collection. In Echoes of the Andes, California-born artist Kay Sekimachi responds to a Peruvian tapestry weaving by emulating its geometric blocks of color and even, square shape. A master weaver whose work runs the gamut from paper arts to handcrafted vessels, Sekimachi often integrates the textile traditions of Japan in her two-dimensional works and sculpture alike. Her obvious attention to Peruvian weaving techniques and awareness of the tradition in which she is working makes Echoes more conversation than appropriation.
While Laura, Gamarra, and Sekimachi are all recognized as “fine artists,” the majority of contemporary artists working within the Peruvian textile tradition today are more likely to be dismissed as “artisans” or “craftspeople.” Though they are often organized into working “collectives” and attributed by community rather than name, the outputs of such artists are just as significant as the work of any award-winning artist. The non-profit Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco was founded to celebrate textile traditions that date back to the pre-colonial era by supporting and mobilizing those who create them. Images on the Center’s website show, most prominently, children wearing and creating these textiles that connect into a tradition that predates them by thousands of years: a reflection of how the artists of such “collectives” not only preserve but continue to enliven this historically significant and technically challenging art form.