A little over a year ago, I asked permission to my late and beloved elder, Abuela Maria of the Murui nation, if she would be willing to teach me how to weave in the way of her ancestors. It had taken me over a year to gather the courage to ask her because I understood the weight of the request. It was widely known that the abuela rarely took on new students within her own indigenous community, much less a gringa, a white woman from the north. However, for some reason that I’ll never fully understand, the abuela agreed to teach me. “We start this afternoon,” she said in her sharp, no-nonsense manner of speaking. Walking away from her house, I was equally excited and terrified to begin my lessons…the abuela had that kind of an effect on people.
When I returned after lunch, the abuela had already begun rolling the coconut palm fibers into the thread that I would be weaving with. With a focused, yet, easeful precision, the abuela ran her flat palm across the smooth surface of her inner thigh, wrapping the thin, delicate fibers together to create a thicker and more resilient material that would make up the mochila (medicine bag) that we would be weaving together. After threading the thick metal needle with the combined palm fibers, she began to craft the bottom part of the bag and then eventually handed it to me and said, “Y ya usted.” Translation: “And now you.”
For the next month, I went to the abuela’s porch every single afternoon and worked on my weaving and beading alongside her. I took to the art forms very quickly but obviously had much to learn about the process of bringing my visions and prayers to life. The abuela would often watch me get my string tangled and make the same mistake multiple times and would just smile and laugh. “Weaving isn’t easy, Clarita!” she would yell from across the porch. “It takes more patience than you thought, no? This is why I take on so few students. Weaving is hard work and most women can’t do it.”
The abuela was absolutely right. Weaving and beading are meticulously difficult art forms to master. The mental discipline that is required in order to craft a truly medicinal work of protection, love, care, and divinely inspired creativity is delicately and diligently honed over an entire lifetime. Traditionally, it is an art form and skill that is passed down through a lineage from mother to daughter, grandmother to grandchild. Thus, the weaving of one’s art mirrors the weaving of a family’s gifts, blessings, teachings, conocimiento (knowledge), and sabiduria (wisdom). Weaving, beading, sewing, knitting, quilting, basket making, and all other forms of what we now refer to as “handicrafts” are the material embodiment of a woman’s medicine for they cloak, hold, carry, and shelter all of the sacred and mundane aspects of a family’s daily life.
I often think about the archetypical image of a grandmother seated in an old rocking chair while knitting her grandchild a cozy sweater for the upcoming winter months. Her grandchild is sleeping quietly on her lap, safe and sound in the comfort and warm embrace of her arms. The knitting needles follow their own lulling rhythm of dips and climbs and loops while the grandmother hums softly to herself, infusing her grandchild’s dreams with the peaceful and soothing melody that has echoed and reverberated through the generations. Her love, care, and protection gets stitched into every inch of the sweater. It is not simply the wool that keeps the child warm throughout the cold months but, rather, the undeniable and unshakeable knowledge that the child’s grandmother is with them whenever they put the item of clothing onto their body. This act of pure magic is, of course, not something that is necessarily discussed or acknowledged. The subtlety of a grandmother’s medicine—her love, care, and protection—is what makes the act of her weaving so profoundly powerful.
For a grandmother weaves the fabric of a family with her gnarled, wrinkled, eternal hands. She stretches her arms out wide and gathers all of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren into her heart, recalling every part of herself that has spread itself out across the generations of her descendants. The grandmother collects and reflects the sacredness of each family member back in on themselves, reminding them that they are but one piece of a woven tapestry that makes up the whole of their family constellation. She is the safe keeper of her lineage, the guardian of her family’s origin stories, the transmitter of her people’s songs and prayers. The grandmother holds the invisible thread that connects the ancestors who have passed on to the children who are yet to come.
When we think about the private, intimate, and domestic work of women, we so rarely notice, acknowledge, or value how much time and energy is infused into all that we do. This is applicable for all aspects of homemaking (cooking, cleaning, planting/harvesting/preserving food, gardening, preparing natural medicines, etc.) but is most easily ignored and undervalued when it comes to the artistic contributions that women offer to our families and communities in the form of our woven work (in all of it’s various expressions). There are many reasons for this devaluation of women’s dual art/care work but I suspect that the biggest reason is because these “handicrafts” are created without the woman’s motivation to make a profit off of her labor. Women’s work is, quite literally, a labor of love.
Women create wearable and usable works of art for our family members out of necessity, utility, and creativity. We take note of a need and we meet that need with a handcrafted expression of our attentiveness and care. Thus, our artistic and creative inspiration as women is derived from the caretaking of our families and communities. Each individual piece that we create is woven with the deep knowing that our family/community members will be moving through the world with our medicine suffused into their outward expression of self. In wearing/using the clothes, jewelry, bags, blankets, and baskets that we weave with our hands, our family/community members are saying to the world, “This is who I am. This is who I come from. This is who I am loved by. This is whose lineage I carry with me.”
When women sit down to weave a work of wearable/usable art for our loved ones, we are calling upon the strength, wisdom, and protection of all of our ancestors to support us in the creative birthing process. We open ourselves up as portals for the divine inspiration of our elders long-passed and allow them to enter into our souls and transmit their stories into the piece that we are crafting. For it is a woman’s divine right to birth beautiful things into this world byway of her creativity and artistry. It is a woman’s divine right to express the gifts, teachings, and blessings of her ancestors through the exquisiteness of her hands. It is a woman’s divine right to be intimately connected to her undeniable power as a creatrix who weaves the fabric of her family’s culture.
I often think about all of the art galleries and museums that I used to frequent when I lived in New York City as a young and spiritually hungry artist. I would save up the money that I made from my depressing and exhausting side hustles in order to visit all of these museums and galleries on a weekly basis. As I moved through the sterile, silent spaces, I took in the creative outpourings of countless “famous” and “world-renowned” artists whose work embodied the themes, timelines, categories, and movements of what we refer to as modern, postmodern, and contemporary “art”. There was a seriousness that was required when moving through these spaces. A language that was expected to already be known. Terminology that was thrown around casually, criticisms that were spewed haphazardly, visions and perspectives that came directly from textbooks and workshops and elite (read: expensive) university programs. I couldn’t place it at the time but it now seems absurdly obvious to me that these works of “artistic genius” were missing an extremely important foundation of artistic creativity, that being the medicine of love.
Where was the love? Where was the care? Where was the warmth and protection and connection to blood lineage and ancestry? Where was the family? Where were the mothers and the grandmothers? I simply could not find them anywhere.
Ahhh, yes…well, of course…the mothers and grandmothers were not present because they are not considered to be artists. Their weaving, their beading, their basket making, their knitting, their sewing, their “handicrafts” did not belong on display at the Guggenheim or the MoMA. Their art was too intimate, too private, too familial to be celebrated and showcased alongside the “genius” works of Pablo Picasso, Marina Ambromovich, Andy Warhol and the rest. Family does not belong in art museums because “famous artists” are not seen as fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, grandparents and grandchildren. They are simply “artists”. They are individuals whose connection to their family, lineage, and ancestors supposedly plays no part in their artistic expression.
I often think about the fashion industry and the famous designers who are heralded as some of the most provocative and revolutionary artists of their time. I think about the clothing that they create every “season” that will be worn by a highly exclusive (read: wealthy) group of individuals at a single high-profile event such as a gala, a ball, a luncheon or a dinner. I think about the highly underpaid women that these designers hire (who are most likely undocumented migrant workers or sweatshop laborers on the other side of the globe) to bring their “artistic visions” to life. I think about how this wildly expensive item of clothing will likely never leave the person’s closet again until it gets auctioned off at some celebrity charity event in order to make space for next season’s latest must-have trend from the next “hottest” designer.
Now, I think about a mother or a grandmother who spends hours and hours and days and, potentially, weeks or months hand-stitching a dress, hand-knitting a sweater, hand-beading a necklace, hand-crafting a blanket, or hand-weaving a basket or a medicine bag for someone in her family/community. I think about the fact that this work of wearable art is crafted with the loving intention to last long enough that it could hopefully be passed down through the generations. I think about the strength, the durability, the resilience, the power that this work of art carries. I think about the familial and communal representation and pride that this work of art embodies.
I think about how many people come to the jungle and buy jewelry, medicine bags, hammocks, and baskets from the indigenous women of the territories. I think about how much time it takes for these indigenous women to weave their art, how many generations of women are working through their hands, how much quiet, concentration, and prayers are infused into the women’s work. I think about how little money the women ask for their art. I think about the people who buy the women’s art and then return to the United States, Europe, or, even, other parts of Colombia and sell the women’s work for an obscene amount of money BECAUSE THEY KNOW HOW MUCH THE WOMEN’S WORK IS ACTUALLY WORTH. I think about the fact that the indigenous women will never see even a small fraction of that subsequent profit off of their own labor, their own lineage, and their own god-given creative expression. I think about the disrespect that these people show to the women of the jungle. I think about the very clear lack of relationship that they have (or rather have not) developed with these women. I think about the tokenism and virtue signaling that these people participate in by pretending that they are “helping” these indigenous women while simultaneously refusing to participate in an equitable and honest business in collaboration with them.
More than anything, however, I think about how profoundly sad it is that these people have, at some point in their own lineage, lost their value of and respect for women’s artistic care work. THAT, above all, is the greatest tragedy. For the way in which someone degrades and disrespects one woman’s work is the same way in which they also degrade and disrespect the work of all women. Therefore, how would it be possible for me to expect them to see the value of the indigenous women’s work if they cannot even value the work of the women in their own families, their own lineages, and their own communities?
A few months ago, I asked another abuela here in the jungle if her oldest daughter worked. Confused, she responded, “Well, of course she works. She works all day every day. She does all the cooking. She takes care of the home. She helps her husband out in the fields with all of the food and medicine that they plant and harvest together. She cares for her children and her nieces and nephews. She beads and she weaves and creates her art. She accompanies her family in ceremony. My daughter is always working.” In her response, I understood the ignorance and disrespect that my question had held. In my warped western “feminist” understanding of what constitutes “work” under a capitalist framework of “labor”, I entirely disregarded the necessary, undeniable, and SACRED work of women.
Because the fact of the matter is this:
The home has to be cleaned. The meals have to be cooked. The laundry has to get done. The children have to be nurtured and educated. The family has to be clothed and cloaked in warmth. The food has to be harvested and planted. The dreams, visions, stories, and prayers of a lineage have to be woven into the hearts of the descendants. And it is the women who take on this sacred role and responsibility. It is the women who carry their culture, their histories, and their legacies forward. It is the women who weave their love and their ferocity into all the domestic items that safeguard and protect their families. It is the women whose art and care remind us that we are ferociously loved.
Women are artists in everything that we do because we are natural born CREATRIXES. Thus, every act of creation and every act of care is the purest embodiment of our work as artists. Our art is expressed through the love and warmth of the home that we make for our families. Our art is expressed through the delicious and nourishing meals that we prepare. Our art is expressed through the bedtime stories that we recite and the lullabies that we sing. Our art is expressed through the attention and presence that we offer to our children and our grandchildren. Our art is expressed through the intricate weaving and balancing of our family’s needs, schedules, appointments, errands, meltdowns, school projects, extracurricular activities, and so on. Our work, our labor of love, is only invisible to those who have been conditioned to no longer see our artistry clearly, for it is our families, and all that we do for them, that are the greatest artistic masterpieces of all.
ART CREDIT:
Eliana María Muchachasoy Chindoy, Camëntsá Nation -- Alto Putumayo, Colombia
"Weaving Good Thought"
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