We were overjoyed by the incredible possibility that my artworks and those by the Silät collective could be there in Venice, exhibited alongside the work of artists from all over the world. It is a huge achievement, something actually inexplicable, which I know is the culmination of our insistence on always pushing forward with this ancestral art.
We are proud to take our work, made here with the materials of our native forest, to another place so far away and so important. It excites me to know that we are not alone, that in this exhibition there are so many connections. There are other people and indigenous groups who perhaps have the same problems as us even though they live in territories very different from ours.
To weave with chaguar fibre, which the people of the Gran Chaco have always used to make bags and fishing nets, first you have to go deep into the forest to look for the plants, which grow under the shade of certain trees. Chaguar plants must be cut very carefully so that the thorns that outline their leaves to not cut your hands. The women usually use a machete and make a kind of spear from a tree branch. After peeling the leaves to get the fibres, you have to beat them to loosen them before they can be spun against our bodies. The fibres are spun on the surface of your thigh, with hands covered in ashes; the ashes of different woods vary the colour and texture of the thread. The threads are dyed with roots, bark, leaves or seeds – the colours of the forest – as well as with aniline dyes to achieve brighter colours such as fuchsia.
One thread is held in tension between two supports, such as rods or sticks planted in the ground. There, we begin to weave in the space in between, using a needle or a thorn. Larger pieces are woven between two or three women, or if it a small piece, one woman alone can weave it on the back of a chair. The largest piece made by the Silät collective was woven by seven women. We carried it from house to house, and gathered together in twos or threes to weave at once from either end. The weavers are guided by drawings, sometimes made with a computer and sometimes by hand, or from sketches incised into the ground.
The chaguar has always been very important for the Wichí women, the weavers. We live with the chaguar, it is part of our land just like us. When we take it from the forest, it brings with it its beautiful fragrance and it makes us happy. The aroma of the chaguar stays with it even when it is dyed and woven. It is the smell of our land. The chaguar never ceases to surprise us, with everything it can do and the new forms it takes.
We always weave. In particular, we weave bags, which we call hilu in our native language, and when we speak in Spanish we call yicas. We weave into the yicas the shapes that our mothers and grandmothers taught us. There is great beauty there and we know we cannot lose these traditions. In the past, people from outside our community did not understand that everything we know goes into our weavings. We have suffered a lot of poor treatment and poor payment for our work as weavers.
One day, we began to make large-scale textiles, encouraged by a woman who began to work with us, Andrei Fernández. At first, we called her Suluj, white, but later we began to call her Chisuk, rebellious woman, because she motivated us to do things we had never done, or even thought about doing, things that have allowed us to begin to value our work and see it celebrated in many places.
The geometric shapes we make in the fabric have meanings; each one is a message. Some shapes reference birds, footprints, cat’s eyes, our landscape. In the images we recall our ancestors and see that they are still part of us.
When I learned to weave, I was taught how to make the turtle’s shell and the carancho’s claws. In our fabrics, you might see squares and rhombuses in different colours, but we see symbols that are part of a language, a language that speaks of the beings that live with us in the native forest.
I believe and trust that yes, we are making a contribution so that more is known about my people, about their beliefs and their history, but also their lives in the present. And it is important for my own people to see the extent of recognition and value for our culture that we can find outside our communities.
I do not think we will see the impact yet, but it is already happening. The important thing is that everyone now knows that we are here, part of this land, alive and resisting. We are always in solidarity, seeking respect and value for us and our work, for who we are and what we want to be, in honour of our ancestors. We will continue fighting!
