As we enter into the Summer months, we speak with Ana María Zamora Moreno, a textile artist and educator based in Colombia. Ana’s multigenerational community workshops support her core belief in textiles as a means to connect us to the past, the present and a global collective future.
Textile Society of America (TSA): Ana, please share a bit about your work and inspiration!
Ana María Zamora Moreno (AMZM): My inspiration is the connection with the place where I live. I understand embroidery as a fluid mosaic of individual and collective memories that materialized through threads connecting Colombia’s biodiversity. My embroideries are a mixture of scientific and traditional knowledge, experimentation with natural colors and materials, and a connection to the experiences of people from different geographical regions. To embroider is to resist the productive system, to create spaces of slowness. I do intuitive embroidery.
TSA: What is your favorite textile memory?
AMZM: I was working with indigenous fishermen from one Tikuna community, south of Colombia. One day all the community was in the Maloka (communal house); men were removing the roof. For some days women were weaving long palm leaves, and men were roofing, tidying the weaved palms with natural fibers. It was a collaborative embroidery made by, and for all the community. A beautiful interwoven roof, a roof that in some years will return to the soil of the jungle to be decomposed. It is a memory that recalls collaboration, functional natural textiles, ancestral knowledge, sustainability, and beauty.
TSA: Does your work tend to reflect a communal process or more of an individual practice (or both?)
AMZM: I cycle between solitary work and moments of collaborative workshops with communities around Colombia. After lockdown from Covid 19, I began to do embroidery workshops in collaboration with artist Esteban Borrero. These workshops are an invitation to transgress pre-established gender and age roles. We work with collaborative learning, where the teacher- student power dynamic is transformed; everybody can teach and learn. During workshops, we talk about biodiversity, migration, reproductive strategies of species, population size, and the environmental threats species face, among other topics. We seek to generate an interwoven knowledge towards a peaceful relationship between persons and with nature. After workshops, I do solitary work. I do an art piece that reflects the dialogue we had during workshops, interwoven with my own experiences.
TSA: Do you encounter any misconceptions about your textiles and how do you address these?
AMZM: When I do collective embroidery workshops, I wonder what is the thing or entity that we commonly call the author of an art work. Separate from recognizing each person´s work, I have questions about the philosophical meaning of authorship in textile art works. In collaborative workshops I leave the materials and embroideries with the people. The only things that remain with me are the photographic record and the memories I reinterpret in my studio. Even though memories of people are part of the thing I call my work, they are so subtle that I do not give them authorship.
TSA: Do you have any textile-related books or resources that you particularly recommend?
AMZM: WIth my scientific training, I continuously consult information about animals and plants. I use different bird guides, fish guides and botanical guides. To learn about textiles, I consult anthropological books that talk about American textiles, and I have a special fascination with books published by academic institutions about fibers and natural dyeing processes. One book I recommend is Pura Fibra – tejer pensamiento, pensar tejiendo (Pure Fiber- weaving thought, thinking weaving). It shows techniques and ritual uses of sixteen plant fibers used in Colombia, going beyond silk, cotton and wool.
TSA: If given the power to master any skill instantaneously, what would it be? AMZM: I would like to master the use of looms. One of my dreams is to weave with natural fibers in a loom. I would like to experiment creating a big format textile with fibers like yanchama and fique (Furcraea macrophylla).
TSA: Are you actively collecting textiles?
AMZM: Yes. My process of collection has been intuitive. I began collecting textiles when my mother gave me a hand embroidered table cloth that belonged to my grandmother. I enjoy touching textiles, hearing their stories, cleaning them, and sometimes transforming them. My collection is eclectic. I follow three rules: the textiles I have must be handmade; when I buy them, the textiles should come from places I visit; and I will receive or rescue textiles from friends and family. What I found most difficult about textile collections are the repairs, and saving them from environmental threats.
TSA: How do you imagine that humanity might engage with textiles in the future?
AMZM: Textiles are the materialization of technical and symbolic knowledge. They have been a central technology of human life; they tell stories. Humanity has lost knowledge about symbolism and ancestral techniques used in traditional textiles. In the present, as a society, we are immersed in consumption and we are losing textile knowledge. To preserve this knowledge I dream of a global open source initiative that preserves the knowledge of textile techniques, and the uses of natural fibers. In my daily life, I try to discuss with new generations what is behind a textile and the environmental impact of hand made textiles versus fast fashion. Also, I try to recall the socioemotional impact that doing something with hands has on humans. Textiles are part of the sustainability conversation, and can be used as artifacts that enable peaceful relations.
TSA: What projects are you currently working on / looking forward to? AMZM: At the moment I am finishing a series of fish embroidered in a natural fiber called yanchama (Ficus insipida / F. maxima). The fiber acts as a river, as water, where embroidered migrant fish from different ecosystems coexist. I am also beginning a project called Parental Care. A series of felting nests, made by mixing natural materials from different territories. In these nests European wool is felted with cotton from the Amazon, or with kapok (Ceiba pentandra) from the Andean lands. Felting is a connection of biogeographical regions, also an analogy of connections between parents. Nests as acts of care.
Ana María Zamora Moreno (She, they) is an embroidery artist and educator based in Colombia. She studied biology and holds a doctoral degree in Anthropology of Education. She has been working in rural education in Colombia. She learned to embroider in México (2014). Her interests are the uses of natural fibers, natural pigments and collaborative methodologies to talk and embroider about biodiversity, as well connections of territories materialized in textiles.
Web site: www.anamariazamora.com
Instagram: http://instagram.com/m_a_n_i_g_u_a
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