Textiles, Techne and Power in the Andes

On 15-17 March Luciana Martins and Denise Y. Arnold from the Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies convened an international conference on ‘Textiles, Techne and Power in the Andes’, at Senate House.

Textiles in Andean civilizations were developed over millennia to document and display complex cultural patterns. The conference brought together researchers with a variety of theoretical approaches, museum curators and artists to explore the significance of textile design, beyond the immediate functional utility of cloth.

Following the conference Dr Martins said: “The variety of specialisms and approaches amongst the delegates led to a vibrant atmosphere, in which we discussed new ideas about textiles’ materiality, alterity, identity, politics and poetics. The combination of science and art in the Conference room was welcomed by delegates.”

Highlights of the conference included a spellbinding performance by Chilean poet and artist Cecilia Vicuña on Andean textiles and contemporary art, which reminded the audience of the sensorial dimensions of the khipus (knotted cords) beyond their intellectual meanings; the lively opening of the Susie Goulder (Warmi) exhibition 'Textiles Sculptures' at the Peruvian Embassy (Portable Gallery, from 19-30 March); and challenging plenary lecture by Tom Zuidema at the British Museum.

The focus on weaving communities of practice (the title of the AHRC project that mainly funded the conference) allowed for the development of the links between ethnography, archaeology and history, providing museums worldwide with a much wider context for their Andean collections than traditionally understood.