Conference organised by the ARTES Group for Iberian and Latin American Visual Culture and the Zurbarán Centre for Spanish and Latin American Art, with the support of the Instituto Cervantes.
In the early 16th century, Spanish settlers attempted to introduce silk-rearing technology to Mexico, including live silkworms and mulberry saplings. In most places, these efforts were unsuccessful, but in the Mixtec region of Oaxaca, Indigenous communities adopted silk cultivation, and the industry thrived for much of a century. This lecture examines how Mixtec peoples produced raw silk for profit while also acquiring silk garments to adorn the first churches. It considers how these objects were valued, partly because they were integrated into Indigenous worldviews concerning the nature or ontology of sacred substances.
About the speaker: Jamie Forde is Lecturer in Premodern Art at the University of Edinburgh. His work spans both Art History and Archaeology of pre-Hispanic and colonial Mexico. His research has appeared in journals such as Ancient Mesoamerica, Latin American Antiquity, Mexicon, Colonial Latin American Review, and Ethnohistory.
The lecture will be moderated by Professor Claudia Hopkins (University of Edinburgh).
