An exhibit of Bolivian folk art evokes local cultures and environments

In the same way that a Wall Street banker would never show up at work sporting beads and sandals, it would be unthinkable for members of an indigenous community in Bolivia to wear the distinctive dress of another community.

Folk art is quintessentially local art, an expression of not only a specific cultural outlook, but even of the land itself in the form of the materials and tools available to artisans. And so, stepping into the new IDB Cultural Center exhibit “Indigenous Presence in Bolivian Folk Art” is like stepping into a traditional community itself, and coming into direct contact with the people and their environment.

The exhibit’s centerpiece evokes the reed boats used on Lake Titicaca. A seemingly humble material, these sturdy plants are still used to make baskets, roofs, clothes, and even islands suitable for habitation. In former times, their fibers were even employed in the process of mummification, making them important not only in everyday life but in the spiritual realm as well.

The exhibit’s star attractions are examples of textiles for which the Andean cultures are so famous. Traditional Andean textiles are absolutely related to the identity of the group producing them, according to Silvia Arze, Bolivian anthropologist and the exhibit’s associate curator. She quoted the Spanish chronicler Bernabé Cobo, who reported that “The creator Viracocha formed all the nations existing on the earth… painting each with the dress and clothing that it was to have.” From ornately patterned costumes embroidered with metallic threads, to the vivid patterns of women’s shawls and skirts, the exhibit displays a wide variety of textile traditions. Also on display are both a handmade spinning wheel from the El Alto, a sprawling new city near La Paz inhabited largely by immigrants from rural areas, together with a spindles and a basket of wool yarn, representing the millennia-old technology.

Just as the fabrics are dyed with mineral and vegetable agents, most of the other objects in the exhibit show their direct relationship with the land through the culture of the local people. Included are objects of wood, silver, and even feathers, which the traditional cultures fashioned into works that amazed the first Spaniards who saw them.

While most of the objects in the exhibit are traditional, many of them also illustrate the receptivity of indigenous artisans to new materials, aesthetic concepts, and even end uses. For example, when the Spaniards brought Catholicism to the region, local artists incorporated the new religious iconography into their traditional cosmology, giving rise to what is called the “mestizo baroque.” Thus, saints and other Biblical subjects often became the bearers of ancient gods of the mountains, lightning, the earth, and other traditional objects of veneration.

Bolivian art continues to change, hardly surprising in view of the sweeping effects of globalization and the migration of people from traditional villages to the cities. Much of present day production is directed to the growing tourism market as well as to collectors, both domestic and international, according to Arze. Internet sales are accounting for a growing share of handicrafts sales in Bolivia and elsewhere. But at the same time, artisans set limits on change, particularly when it involves religious observations. At the feast of the Gran Poder (Great Power) in La Paz this past June, for example, artisans themselves prohibited the use of embroidery of figures from television programs.

The objects in the exhibit were selected by Félix Įngel, curator of the IDB Cultural Center, together with Arze and Inés Chamorro, advisor to the Ibero-American Artisan Community.