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Chile

Craft contamination

Oct 19th, 2008
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The workshop series at MAVI finished with a day-long session looking at the various elements in putting together a craft exhibition. I was quite surprised by the experimental approach that was taken by participants. We had three quite basic tables to work with. One group started piling other furniture on top.
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Another used one of the group herself as the plinth on which to display objects. And the last group infiltrated the stairs with stolen objects accessible via the adjacent lift.

Craft in Chile has the potential not only to present objects of great interest but also to animate them with stories and a little local attitude.

I learned a great deal from the participants. I’m quite amazed at the breadth of projects they are involved in. It was quite a privilege to work with them and I hope there can something that comes of this. Certainly for the World of Small Things exhibition and discussions around the Code of Practice for Craft-Design Collaborations.

Conversation on the sidelines continued about the strangeness of bringing something artisanal into the gallery. It was obvious that the works were strangers to this environment. The challenge ahead is to see what happens when someone starts knocking on the door of the exhibition committee. Perhaps someone might start a gallery themselves..

The audacity of craft

Oct 18th, 2008
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It was a relief to see with the second day of the workshop another good crowd. There does seem to be an interest here in doing something more with craft. I wonder sometimes whether coming from a foreign culture like Australia I am in danger of contaminating a more traditional craft scene such as in Chile. I come with a more academic approach to the idea of craft which can potentially alienate the artisans themselves.

But sometimes it’s good to stir things up. Paula Magazine recently rang a short piece about Justo Pastor Mellado, an important Chilean curator – gatekeeper – of visual arts. He makes all the right noises – against consumerism, fashion, conservatism, etc.  But there’s a sense of righteousness behind this as well. As though, ‘What can you expect from the world?’ Maybe this sentiment comes more from the journalist that the curator. But it leads to a kind of defeatism, as though the forces of evil will always find their way, no matter how straight the path. It’s a hard, critical, view of life, but it also justifies a kind of disengagement too. Why bother?

Perhaps that is a bigger challenge than getting craft into art galleries. The task is to find an door that is open, not just for the language of materials spoken by lowly artisans, for anything. From this distance, Barack Obama’s ‘audacity of hope’ seems a slick marketing phrase, following the yellow brick road of the American dream that has lead the world to the present abyss. But, on the other hand, maybe a little bit of hope isn’t such a bad thing. Like salt, in small proportions it enhances the flavour of things. But too much of it becomes poisonous.

Working with organisations like Raiz Diseño and ONA, I can see that there’s salt on the table. Today I also learned about the marvelous Mapuche craft promoted by the Chilean version of World Vision (funded by Australia). Chile is certainly a country filled with possibility.

Anyhow, tomorrow is the workshop when we get so see how craft as a ‘yoga for the mind’ is translated into authentic Chileno. Perhaps we can pick the lock.

The Andes is revealed

Oct 18th, 2008
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I am in Santiago for a little while presenting a series of lectures and workshops on the theme of ‘craft as art’. The presentation is organised by Raiz Diseno and supported by ONA in partnership with MAVI.

The series basically involves outlining the practice of ‘contemporary craft’ as practiced in countries like Australia, and seeing how it might apply to Chile. There are many obstacles in this direction. ‘Artesanías’ is an inexact translation of ‘craft’. While craft is a largely middle class activity in Australia, in Chile artisans have quite a low status, despite their importance for national identity. But in Chile at this point in time, there seems to be so many people are wanting to open up the space between the gallery and the shop. It seems worth a try.

There was a great audience for the first lecture last night. The question of the lecture was the relationship between art, design and craft. It seemed useful to have a reasonable simple model of art to begin with, so I based the argument around a ‘yoga for the mind’.

The progress was steady and the mixture of Spanish-English-Spanglish gave us time to digest some of the strange practices on the other side of the Pacific. After two hours, the audience was still engaged and took the opportunity for some quite spirited discussion. As often happens, much of the passion evoked was about the barriers separating craft off from the centres of power. It helped greatly having this event in a visual art gallery, as it provided a good sign that opportunities exist, if we know how to ask for them.

It’s a reasonably clear day in Santiago. The smog is a thin veil, behind which you can just make out the Andes. And from MAVI, we can just glimpse the kind of creative expressions that craft might be able to achieve in a gallery.

Craft across the Pacific

Sep 16th, 2008
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In cooperation with Raiz Diseño, ONA and MAVI (Museum of Visual Art), we will be presenting a workshop in Santiago Chile on 16-18 October to explore ways of exhibiting craft in art galleries. This is a wonderful opportunity to extend the dialogue between contemporary craft in Australia and Latin America and will coincide with the publication of the first craft magazine Mano de Obra.

Images on the flyer are from Marian Hosking, Nicole Lister, Beth Hatton and the group exhibition Heresy (Craft Victoria). The brooch below is by Roseanne Bartley (a larger version can be downloaded here).

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The past re-stitched

Apr 26th, 2008
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Towards the end of the Spanish Civil War, the Chilean poet and communist Pablo Neruda organised a boat to enable endangered by the political to the right in Spain to find exile in Chile. Among the refugees in the Winnipeg was Madrid artist Roser Bru. She became actively involved in the Allende period and was commissioned to produce a large textile work for the UNCTAD building, constructed in 1971 for the Third United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

The work was lost after the coup which saw Pinochet come to power. However, it has been recently discovered by an art collector Eduardo Artino, who has paid for its restoration. In the photo above you see the artist (in her 90s), with restorers Paola Moreno and Anna-Maria Rojas.

It was an historic moment as the artist could look on her work after 36 years, and see it being carefully restored to its original condition. Here’s a very concrete form of reconciliation, using the strong craft skills surviving in Chile to repair the link with a past that was so violently torn apart.

What to do with guanacos?

Apr 16th, 2008
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The adventure for craft in the University of Valparaiso continues in 2008. Last year, I witnessed the design students attempt to develop product out of a remote stony Chilean village at the end of the road called Pedernal. This year, their enterprising teacher Patty Gunther takes them to La Ligua, a centre for handmade textiles.

The students are working on a project managed by Claudia Cajtak called Wanaku. The project emerges indirectly from one of the main industries in the area, turkey farming. The company Sopraval has sponsored the project to make something of the small stock of Guanacos, which produce a fur excellent for spinning and weaving.

La Ligua is famous for a number of unique features. As a textile centre, it specialises in handmade jumpers, which you can see hanging from the front of houses. All the weavers are male. The women specialise in sweets, and a characteristic feature of the town is the palomita (little dove), a woman dressed in a white apron waving a white flag advertising the tooth-shattering confections.

The visit to La Ligua was carefully choreographed. We started by meeting the source of project at the Guanaca farm. Along with us was a local spinner Ondina de Carmen. Despite working with the fibre all her life, she had never actually seen a guanaca in reality. She brought her three

daughters along and the family seemed thrilled with the

experience. Ondina then demonstrated how to spin the fibre, using a very crude spindle weighted with a steel nut and rotating on a broken ceramic plate. The students seemed completely fascinated by this exercise in craft magic, though only one young girl was brave enough to try it out herself.

We then visited the home of one of the weavers. The man’s looms were located in his backyard under a crude shelter with lumpy mud floors. They looked crudely constructed, but appeared to work very well. Elsewhere in the garden, the fig tree was in full fruit attracting swarms of bees. The scene was echoed by us city-dwellers, with our little silver boxes, swarming over the rich material scene, gathering up raw substance for our cameras. The scene offered an unmediated world that seemed totally innocent of design. So what might design make of this?

Talking with the manager, Claudia Cajtak, it is clear that Wanaku is not a simple exercise. Though the local participants seem very keen and excited to be part of it, it may not be so easy to convince the rest of the population, which is fraught with small town rivalries.

So what should the students offer as a way of developing the rich potential of this area? What kind of compromise will be necessary to help preserve and strengthen the local culture? Time will tell, but it moves slowly in La Ligua.

Their ‘artesanía’ is our ‘folk-art’

Apr 11th, 2008
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The in-flight magazine for LanChile identifies the position of craft in Latin America. It uses the Spanish work ‘artesanías’, which is usually translated as ‘craft’. However, in in the bi-lingual magazine, it is translated instead as ‘folk-art’.

Why use this term? The writer María José Villanueva positions artsesanía as a counterbalance to globalisation. It responds to questions about who we are and where we are coming from:

Folk art, now updated with a node to contemporary design, continues to provide answers to these existential questions, but with a twist: ‘folk chic’ or folk-art is emerging as a commercial niche that stands in stark contrast to mass-produced homogeneity.

These are noble sentiments which position craft as an alternative to dominant trends in modernity. But why ‘folk-art’? What has happened in the process of ‘updating’?

‘Craft’ has more of an emphasis on skill. It most often represents a body of techniques that are preserved and reproduced by a group of skilled practitioners. As such, it can be elitist and exclusive.

‘Folk-art’ is more democratic. It responds to a humanist sentiment and celebrates expression and the handmade.

While ‘folk-art’ seems more appropriate to our times, it does come at a cost. The demands a much lower level of skill than traditional craft. Ironically, it is a much more urban phenomenon, as harried city-dwellers seek the imaginary sanctuary of the handmade object.

The same could be said for the ‘neo-folk’ scene in Melbourne. What’s curious here is that the term ‘artesanía’ contains both traditional and modern concepts. It is only in the English word of ‘folk’ that the urban concerns are expression. I hope to find out more about the way this term operates, particularly in Chilean universities where craft is still taught.

First results from Pedernal

Sep 11th, 2007
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Design students from Valparaiso University showed the first results from their workshop with residents of Pedernal. These are early days, as the students explore how products might be developed that relate to life in this remote village and also activity engage the residents in their production. The next phase is the response of the residents themselves. Let’s see what unfolds. Given the interruptions due to the closure of the university for 50 days, the results are quite remarkable.
The images also include some recent shots from Santiago and can be seen in full here. This includes the ironic exhibition Hecho en Chine (Made in China) by Chilean painter Bruna Truffi and the Museum of Shadows, otherwise known as the Museo de Artes Decorativas in Santiago.

Patricia Gunther – working with the Hilanderas of Colliguay

Aug 26th, 2007
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yolandayandres

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Hilado de fantasía realizado por Yolanda (Hilandera), a partir del hilado tosco, con un diseño propuesto por Andrés (Alumno de Diseño).

 Patricia Gunther is a lecturer at the University of Valparaiso. Her students feature elsewhere in this blog. She is part of a very interesting push to make craft applicable to the otherwise remote communities. They are just beginning to negotiate how their skills might be of use far from the urban centre.

Las HILANDERAS DE COLLIGUAY poseen la tradición de hilar bellamente la lana de oveja y tejen productos tradicionales de muy buena calidad. Cuando intentan realizar nuevos productos, estos no logran la misma belleza y calidad, haciendo difícil o nula la venta de los mismos.

La ESCUELA DE DISEÑO de la UNIVERSIDAD DE VALPARAÍSO ha desarrollado varias experiencias académicas relacionando el diseño con la artesanía tradicional con efectos de trascendencia para los alumnos pero no para los artesanos, quienes no hacían uso de los resultados de aquellas experiencias.

En la experiencia 2006, se está realizando una relación sostenida y constante, de mucha interacción entre artesanas y alumnos, provocando a la fecha inquietud en el grupo de artesanas de Colliguay que evalúan las propuestas de los alumnos y los resultados obtenidos, y plantean nuevas propuestas en base a lo experimentado. No se trata de que repliquen las propuestas de los alumnos sino que descubran lo nuevo que ellas mismas pueden crear.

El Taller y Práctica posterior académicos, se han desarrollado aplicando la experiencia de dos talleres anteriores (2000 y 2004) y rescatando como puntos de partida en la búsqueda de nuevos productos, los recursos propios de la artesanía textil de Colliguay: el payado que es su manera de dibujar en los tejidos, el hilado tosco usado para objetos de inferior calidad, el ponpón utilizado solo para dar terminaciones a los bolsos, el vellón usado como tramas decorativas, el mimbre utilizado por un artesano vecino que ha hecho los muebles de toda la comunidad y que las hilanderas jamás habrían tejido.

The Hilanderas of Colliguay have the tradition to spin beautifully the ewe wool and tile traditional products of very good quality. When they try to make new products, these do not achieve the same beauty and quality, making it difficult and hard to sell.
The School of Design of the University of Valparaiso has developed several academic experiences relating the design to the traditional crafts with effects of importance for the students but it does not stop the craftsmen, who did not make use of the results of those experiences.

During 2006, a regular relationship is being developed, with interaction between craftswomen and students. This energises the group of craftswomen of Colliguay, who given their evaluations of the resulting proposals of the students, and make new proposals on the basis of the experimented thing. It is not just that they respond to the proposals of the students, but they discover what’s new that they themselves can create.

The academic Workshop and later Practice, have been developed applying the experience of two previous workshop (2000 and 2004) and maintaining outcome possibilities in the search of new products, the own resources of the textile crafts of Colliguay: the payado one that is its way to draw in the weaves, the used coarse spinning for objects of inferior quality, ponpón is used singlly to give completions to the purses, vellón used as decorativas plots, the wicker used by a neighbouring craftsman that have made the furniture of all the community and that the Hilanderas never would have woven.

Paola Moreno – the weave notion

Aug 26th, 2007
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“Imperdibles”, 2006, 3 superficies de 30 x 30 centímetros, construidas con imperdibles (ganchos de seguridad) metálicos.

 It’s been a while since we had the meeting in Valparaiso where we brought craft practitioners from across the south. There was far too much to show, and too little time to hear it all. Afterwards, I asked some of the local artists to provide me with an image and text of their work. I’ll post this material here, hoping that it might gather some interesting possibilities.

Artist statement in Spanish:

Cursé estudios universitarios en diseño hace dos décadas y, desde ese momento, mis actividades han estado relacionadas con las artes visuales a través del textil. El objeto central de mi investigación está enfocado en las preguntas derivadas de la noción de tejido. Como artista y docente, mi compromiso reside en acercar el textil a aquellos nuevos ámbitos que ofrecen las artes contemporáneas, desplazando operaciones tradicionales hacia derivas más experimentales. Todo esto, se refleja en tres conceptos que forman y dan sentido a mi trabajo. La transformación de los materiales, lograda a través de la integración y coherencia formal en la construcción de las piezas. La reiteración, entendida como elemento narrativo que el tejido permite para la formación de superficies. Y, finalmente, la exposición de la fragilidad que existe en los procedimientos manuales y sus productos, sean estos complejos o simples.

Artist statement in English:

I studied design at university two decades ago and, from that moment, my activities been have related to the visual arts through textile. The central object of my investigation is focused in the questions derived from the weave notion. As artist and teacher, my commitment resides in approaching the textile with the new spheres that emerge from the contemporary arts, moving traditional operations towards more experimental drifts. All this, is reflected in three concepts that form and give sense to my work. The transformation of the materials, obtained through integration and formal coherence in the construction of the pieces. The reiteration, understood like narrative element that the weave allows for the formation of surfaces. And, finally, the exhibition of the fragility that exists in the manual procedures and their products, be these complex or simple.

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