Artist Talk in Spanish at The Met: Indigenous Weaving and 20th‑Century Textile Art

As part of the exhibition Aquel Amplex, the Instituto Cervantes, in collaboration with the “Artist Talk en español” program at The Met, presents a talk that approaches weaving from a fully contemporary perspective: not as an archaeological remnant, but as an aesthetic and political technology that continues to inform artistic production today. The Met’s collections illustrate how Andean textiles—Wari, Chimú, and Inca works characterized by complex structures and natural dyes such as cochineal—function as systems of information and cultural identity that still resonate in 21st‑century textile practices. This vitality is made explicit in the work of contemporary figures such as Quechua weaver Nilda Callañaupa Álvarez, whose practice The Met highlights for its commitment to the communal transmission of textile knowledge and its continued relevance in the Andean present.

At the same time, the conversation will situate the work of Cassandra Mayela within a constellation of artists who have critically reactivated textile practices in a contemporary key, as emphasized by The Met’s exhibition Weaving Abstraction in Ancient and Modern Art, which directly links Indigenous techniques with 20th‑century experimentation by artists such as Anni Albers, Sheila Hicks, Lenore Tawney, and the Colombian Olga de Amaral, who incorporates Latin American landscapes and architectures into her work as powerful material abstractions. From this perspective, Mayela’s practice—transforming garments from the Venezuelan diaspora into sensitive structures where fiber, body, and memory intertwine—not only dialogues with tradition, but projects it toward urgent contemporary concerns: migration, identity, sustainability, and community agency.