Tejidos

Installation (Data analysis, Film & Textiles), work in progress

Many Istmeñan women and Muxes still learn the craft of embroidery. This is more than a means to earn a living. Embroidery is a form of cultural resistance through which the community preserves its identity. The patterns reference plants used for healing and traditional spiritual practices and can be read as evidence of anti- colonial epistemologies pioneered by Indigenous women. This wisdom is passed from generation to generation by threading it into the fabric and wearing it. This tradition finds itself in danger today.

Since the past decade’s arrival of multinational companies to the south of Mexico, more than one tradition has been threatened. Communities have been stripped of communal land tenure. Indigenous land has been illegally appropriated and is today largely enclosed by fences, guards and surveillance cameras, no longer accessible to its native inhabitants.

The installation combines these co-occurring developments. The concept is based on maps. Satellite imagery visualises the expanding network of wind turbines stretching over the land which results in decreased biodiversity. Conversely, areal imagery of communal land reveals intact aquifers through heightened vegetation. Textiles with satellite imagery silkscreened onto them will be embroidered in the Isthmus to map absence and interaction. Traditional floral patterns will be “re-placed” into deforested wind parks, revealing the intersection of these “networks”.

Open source data collection:  geocommunes