Cloth (Subalchi) c. 1960

This woven cloth was made by Maya artists, but we don't know exactly when. I wonder about the act of its making. It is not painted, but woven, and this action is also expressive. We can imagine the artist, or artists, maybe even a community of them, working together to create this artifact. Maybe they were thinking about their families, their histories, their traditions. What would it have been like to create this piece with such precision? There are stripes of white forming the body of the cloth, framed on either side by bands of purple, red, and yellow. The blue figures evoke flowers or plants. The fringes on either end remind me of the colorful weavings of Anni Albers, which themselves come from the tradition of other women artisans. Artists are always in conversation, aren't they, across time and space. Each inspiring the creativity of the other. Textiles embrace this history of embodied expression, allowing multiple interpretations and meaning over any one, fixed reading.