Cusco now

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14ºc

Current Projects: With Support From Andean Textile Arts - ATA

Description

The Recovery of Tapestry Weaving in the Cusco Region

To continue with the mission of the revitalization of discontinued ancestral techniques in the Cusco region, the CTTC has selected the pre-Columbian tapestry technique ( weft-faced) as the next to be reintroduced into the weavers' textile repertoire. The Tapestry Project seeks to motivate the CTTC textile artists to incorporate both their traditional iconography as well as personal motifs or visual stories related to their daily life through the use of this malleable ancestral technique. The goal is to take their artistic traditional practice to a more exploratory and contemporary degree.

This important long-term project is destined for the ten groups of adult weavers that form part of the CTTC. By receiving both technical and historical knowledge on the tapestry technique, weavers will continue to reinforce their cultural identity through the assimilation of this ancient technique as their own. The tapestry technique had deep cultural and symbolic significance in ancient Peru thus contemporary Andean weavers will be able to re-open this path through its revitalization.

Weavers will be given materials and tools throughout the learning process of the technique. They will explore tapestry weaving on the traditional loom they master, the backstrap loom, however, they will be encouraged to experiment for the first time with the vertical loom, in which pre-Columbian tapestries were made. This loom has been discontinued since colonial times, and it will be of great significance to recover it along with the ancestral technique of Tapestry.

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