Manta Experimental 1

Collage with Linoleum Block Elements on Hanji Paper

34.75 x 17.5 inches

2022

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This piece is part of a new 3-piece collection titled, Manta Experimental (Experimental Weavings). I was inspired to create these prints as a way to talk about the role of storytelling and weaving in my culture. These large scale scroll mounted art pieces are inspired by a 2021 series titled Mantas de la Memoria (Memory Cloths) which were created in a smaller format.

My family is from the land we know today as Peru,and one of the things that I've always enjoyed doing is exploring the different kinds of approaches to weaving and fabric that exist in the different parts of the region of the Andes. The approaches to symbolism and color vary by location and climate.

In this series of works, I sought to reclaim that practice and use some of my own imagery to talk about my contemporary reality as a woman who has been displaced from her ancestral culture, a member of the Peruvian diaspora. My ancestors were Indigenous and African, and they were colonizers too. 

So much history has been erased that I know very little about my roots, my parents both migrated to the US and I didn’t get to experience Peru until I was a late teen. But the art and the little I have been able to learn has shaped my own mark making. During my plant journeys I am able to reconnect to my ancestors. I understand that my role as an artist is to remember, to resurface and to remix the traditions of the past, so that they are not completely erased. 

For this series, I incorporated different kinds of symbols and elements that are unique to my lived experience as a woman of color in the United States and a Peruvian in the diaspora.