Cosmic Symbolism and Textiles of Mexico
"When the mind explores the symbol, it is led to ideas that lie beyond the reach of reason."
Carl G. Jung
If the environment determines the type of perception and this is the essence of graphic expression, then we understand why this actual art seems so remote to us. We live in a culture where science determines our perceptions of reality and not of the environment ...
I have always been very curious about the meaning of symbols, to be able to find explanations in my dreams, or even in the Bible, as a metaphorical example. It is not that I consider myself a religious person, but I was educated with the Christian doctrine that throughout my life I was rejecting some judgments in order to find clearer and more forceful answers in Buddhism. My intention here is not to talk about religion, but it was an essential part of my life that helped me to develop a semiotic analysis based on the various indigenous cosmovisions that I later applied in my studies of ornaments for the development of contemporary textile patterns.
Chiapas is one of the states of the Mexican Republic with the highest proportion of Indian settlers. Tzeltales, Tzotziles, and Tojolabales speak languages of the Mayan family. In the different villages, garments with particular characteristics are made - mainly in terms of colors and designs - which allow their wearers to differentiate themselves even from other members of the same ethnic group. This validation of the characteristics of textiles acting as a sign of identity, has led to the preservation of ancestral textile-making techniques, as well as their ornamentation, among the weavers of the Mayan peoples and their beliefs.
Among the elements embodied in the textiles of the Maya Highlands are: The Universe; The Tree; The Star; The Ceiba Tree; The Bird; The Toad; The Snake; The Vulture; The Monkey; The Flowers; The Sun - whose symbol is The Butterfly – and The Corn.
No other region has the ethnic richness that characterizes Oaxaca. In this rugged and diverse territory live Amuzgos, Chatinos, Chinantecos, Huaves, Mazatecos, Mixes, Mixtecos, Tecuates, Tlapanecos, Triquis and Zapotecos. This wealth gives rise to a wide range of cultural expressions, including the textile tradition. There are communities in which natural dyes are still used - such as cochineal, indigo, some flowers such as marigolds or pericon and the purple snail - to dye fabrics. This connection that I had with the various techniques and ornaments of the artisan communities of Chiapas and Oaxaca, for example, or this understanding of being able to understand the meaning of each symbol, of each pattern is not merely spiritual. “It is not about just doing to get it done”. It is a conception, a relationship between the mind and the spirit. In order to generate a contemporary language using artisanal processes, we must first understand and comprehend the cosmovision that a village, a tribe, or a community manages.
“No pattern should be without some sort of meaning”.William Morris
My work as a visual artist in the development of frets and patterns is based on the relationship that I have with my environment. Maps and urban grids; diagrams and warps.
Through abstraction, mental representations are reduced to an essential minimum relative to their changing level of application. It is impossible to express the totality of an experience. That is why we abstract: we reduce information to its most important features, to what it retains a relevant meaning for us, and to what is significant and we deem appropriate in our communication.
Abstraction, despite its philosophical and spiritual aspect, has eminently practical purposes. It is a process of adapting a specific case to an indeterminate number of other cases that have some kind of similarity with the origin. In the cosmovision, the play of “ebb and flow” between the general-abstract and the particular-concrete is fundamental.
It is the mechanism of human experience based on adaptation processes that involve going and coming back: historical experience generates teaching; this, abstracted, becomes applicable, since from its general level it descends towards concrete cases that keep different levels of similarity between them. This is the power of meditation that I manage to transmit through my work.
"Abstract is the essential function of the human spirit."
Josef Albers
It was the year that my dad was dying of leukemia. It was the year that I was almost on the point of drowning in the sea, and it was also the same year that the cochineal forced me to move to Oaxaca…
I didn’t believe in epiphanies but I remember that I had one just when I was traveling through Oaxaca. I will never forget it... My mind took me to a place in the middle of the mountains, I did not know where I really was. I felt too exhausted and too cold. I just remember that there were more people with me and it was snowing - I thought it was somewhere in the middle of the Himalayas, despite not knowing. I felt a silhouette of someone while I was lying covered with many fabrics on top of my body... it was a child who was watching me, I remember he had the most brightened emerald-green eyes and he was smiling at me. My eyes could see through the distance that we were lined up in a caravan to enter a small town in the middle of nowhere. I heard a whisper: "Don't worry, we are finding you a place to stay".
I opened my eyes again and I found myself sitting in a completely empty and purely white room. I managed to identify this “being of light” as an (Omniscient and Omnipresent Being), which you can call Him whatever you like.
"Everything is and everything will be fine"... these words were the ones I remember clearly when I woke up from this dream and the truck had arrived in Oaxaca.
When things like this happen I think you have to keep going and maybe it was that sign that I claimed from the Universe and I just realized that I was doing the right thing. That’s the power of meditation. You don’t feel the loneliness.
If I do some analysis and look at my life, maybe I would never finish writing, but what I want to get to with all this is the way we must keep aligned in the Act of Creating.
To listen to “our nymphs of creation”, to be able to achieve any piece, and to be able to channel all our emotions. Therein lies the part of the symbol and everything you want to convey. Without a doubt, I consider myself a spiritual person and meditation practitioner; perhaps this has helped me to understand my work as an artist and the relationship that I keep with my pieces.
Abstraction is purely spiritual and each shape, each line, each grid is the reflection of how you conceive your Universe, how you understand your mind, and how we develop infinite patterns every day, without realizing it.
Story by Daniel Villela of Phigmento
