Crafting Gender

Eli Bartra

Description

This volume initiates a gender-based framework for analyzing the folk art of Latin America and the Caribbean. Defined here broadly as the "art of the people" and as having a primarily decorative, rather than utilitarian, purpose, folk art is not solely the province of women, but folk art by women in Latin America has received little sustained attention. Crafting Gender begins to redress this gap in scholarship. From a feminist perspective, the contributors examine not only twentieth-century and contemporary art by women, but also its production, distribution, and consumption. Exploring the roles of women as artists and consumers in specific cultural contexts, they look at a range of artistic forms across Latin America, including Panamanian molas (blouses), Andean weavings, Mexican ceramics, and Mayan hipiles (dresses).Art historians, anthropologists, and sociologists from Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States discuss artwork from Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Suriname, and Puerto Rico, and many of their essays focus on indigenous artists. They highlight the complex webs of social relations from which folk art emerges. For instance, while several pieces describe the similar creative and technical processes of indigenous pottery-making communities of the Amazon and of mestiza potters in Mexico and Colombia, they also reveal the widely varying functions of the ceramics and meanings of the iconography. Integrating the social, historical, political, geographical, and economic factors that shape folk art in Latin America and the Caribbean, Crafting Gender sheds much-needed light on a rich body of art and the women who create it.ContributorsEli BartraRonald J. DuncanDolores JulianoBetty LaDukeLourdes Rejon PatronSally PriceMaria de Jesus Rodriguez-ShadowMari Lyn SalvadorNorma ValleDorothea Scott Whitten

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Folk art
• Latin America

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2003
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822384878
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

 

   

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Crafting Gender

Women and Folk Art in Latin America and the Caribbean

   Durham and London 

©  Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper  Designed by C. H. Westmoreland Typeset in Adobe Garamond with Pabst display by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix

  Introduction 

 (Suriname) Always Something New: Changing Fashions in a ‘‘Traditional Culture’’ 

Contents

 (Puerto Rico) The Emergence of theSanteras:Renewed Strength for Traditional Puerto Rican Art 

  (Panama) Kuna Women’s Arts: Molas, Meaning, and Markets 

    (Ecuador) Connections: Creative Expressions of Canelos Quichua Women 

 (Mexico) Engendering Clay:Las Ceramistasof Mata Ortiz

 . (Colombia) Women’s Folk Art in La Chamba, Colombia 

 (Argentina) The Mapuche Craftswomen 

 . -(Mexico) Women’s Prayers: The Aesthetics and Meaning of Female Votive Paintings in Chalma 

    (Mexico) Earth Magic: The Legacy of Teodora Blanco



  (Mexico) Tastes, Colors, and Techniques in Embroidered Mayan Female Costumes 

Contributors Index 

vi

Contents



Illustrations

Suriname:Changing Fashions in a ‘‘Traditional Culture’’ . A reverse appliqué textile in progress  . An embroidered cape with patchwork/appliqué borders  . A ‘‘bits-and-pieces’’ cape  . A Saramaka narrow-strip cape  . Skirt with yarn embroidery and crocheted edging  . Calabash drinking bowls  . Decorative carved calabashes  Puerto Rico:The Emergence of the Santeras .Las Tres Reinas Magas . Raquel Pagani in her workshop  . Archangel Saint Raphael  Panama:Kuna Women’s Arts . Kuna women in traditional dress  . Young girls learn to make molas  . One-color bird mola  . Mola blouse  . Multicolored frog-leg mola  . Canoe mola  . Chicha mola  . Multicolored political mola  . Stuffed fish  Ecuador:Creative Expressions of Canelos Quichua Women . Estela Dagua and Marian Vargas apply resin to a small jar  . Apacha Vargas and Estela Dagua  . Clara Santi Simbaña and José Abraham Chango 

Colombia:Women’s Folk Art in La Chamba . Lidia Inés Sandoval working  . Hen-shaped water container  . Fish-shaped bowl and donkey figures 

Argentina:The Mapuche Craftswomen . Mapuche woman in traditional dress  . Rayén (Rosa Zurita)  . Mapuche woman weaving  . Mapuche rug, Chile  . The circulation of crafts within the Mapuche community  Mexico: Las Ceramistas of Mata Ortiz . Paz Silva de Ramírez shaping a pot  . Sara Corona painting  . Quality of Mata Ortiz pottery  . Quality of Mexican folk art  . Mata Ortiz pottery  . Mata Ortiz pottery  . Mata Ortiz pottery  Female Votive Paintings in Chalma . Ex-voto giving thanks for successful surgery  . Ex-voto giving thanks for surviving domestic violence  . Ex-voto giving thanks for surviving a beating  . Ex-voto giving thanks for recovery from an illness  The Legacy of Teodora Blanco . Mermaid by Irene Blanco  . Berta Blanco Núñez  . Angélica Vázquez  Embroidered Mayan Female Costumes . Mestiza terno  . Mestiza next to tortilla machine  . Everyday hipil  . Patterns for the edges of a hipil  . Mayan woman with hipil 

viii

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the Council for International Exchange of Scholars (), for having granted me the Fulbright–García Robles research scholarship, which made it possible for me to put together this book. Thanks also to Ryan Long, Rob Sikorski, and Jean O’Barr, without whose support I would not have been able to spend a year at Duke University, where I completed most of the research necessary for compiling the anthology and where I wrote this introduction and my essay. I would also like to acknowledge the sincere generosity and friendship of Natalie Hartman, at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Duke, whose support facilitated my work. I thank Cindy Bunn and Robert Healy, also at Duke, for their invaluable assistance.

Finally, of course, and as always, I thank John Mraz for his immeasurable and indispensable collaboration at every stage of this project.