Lexicon, technique and symbolism in Mesoamerican textiles

Alejandro de Ávila Blomberg

Lexicon, technique and symbolism in Mesoamerican textiles

Weaving is the most significant means of aesthetic expression in the material culture of the indigenous and Mestizo (i.e., culturally hybrid) peoples of Mexico and Guatemala. Although the textile arts of this region are vigorous and diverse, they have received less attention by the global academic community than their pre-European and contemporary counterparts from the Andes, insular Asia, the Islamic world or West Africa, among other areas. The scarcity of archaeological textiles from Mesoamerica, because of poor conservation due to climatic restraints, has contributed to this lack of interest on the part of scientific researchers. A growing body of lexical data from the numerous languages spoken in the area, however, allows us to explore diachronically highly specific semantic fields, in order to trace the natural history and the cultural evolution of this foremost artform. Recording this information is a race against time, unfortunately, as several languages in the region lose the speakers who retain this specialized body of knowledge. In this presentation we will review three case studies that highlight the urgency and the depth of insights to be gained from etymological reconstructions, technical analysis and iconographic interpretation in the realm of the loom and the needle, in the lands of the quetzal and the golden eagle.

Bio

Dr. Alejandro de Avila was born and raised in Mexico City. He earned a B.A. in Anthropology and Physiological Psychology at Tulane University, followed by an M.A. in Psychobiology and a Ph.D. in Anthropology at UC Berkeley. He has worked as a researcher and professor at three academic institutions in Mexico and established the first WWF (World Wildlife Fund) headquarters in that country. He is the founding director of the Ethnobotanical Garden of Oaxaca and curator/researcher/consultant of the Textile Museum of Oaxaca. He has published more than eighty works on traditional plant and fungal knowledge, community-based conservation, early biological documentation in Mexico, and the history of textile art in Mesoamerica, among others. His curatorial work includes numerous exhibitions in various museums in Mexico as well as in Indonesia, Lebanon and the United States

The event is jointly organized by the Endangered Language Archive of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Ethnological Museum, Staatliche Museen Berlin, Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz.