Fabrics, means of expression of the ancestral people

Ecuadornews:

The Manteño-Huancavilca culture manifested its thought with figures that represented the myths. For them, the origin of everything was deciphered with the strokes.

For some the myth does not happen to be a false information, when in fact it implies a way of thinking based on the imagination, particular way of deciphering things and phenomena, different to the categories of Cartesian logic.

Under that concept Ileana Almeida Vélez summarizes her book Cosmogonic Myths of the Indigenous Peoples in Ecuador, with which she tries to rescue that thought that refers to the primordial, cosmic creation of the universe itself, of the elements and human beings.

Ingerborth Constantine, manager of ancestral languages, and Monica Ganchozo, visual artist and sculptor, highlight the myths in the Manteño-Huancavilca culture (500-1532 AD) and their expression through the tissues.

“The myth is classified into four parts: Origin of God, of the human being, of the creation of nature and the Apocalypse. All languages are born of a sound, of imitating the anaconda, the jaguar, the tree and the waterfall. This creates a phoneme and the set of them give way to words, which become the myths of cultures, “explains Constantine.

This is how the human being investigates its origin and that oral expression begins to become tangible. In the case of the Manteño-Huancavilcas, the way to manifest and preserve their culture is through symbols in the tissues.

“The tile is a means with which that culture continues to communicate with us and remains alive. The population expresses what it is, its identity and culture. Their nature and what they represent. ”

In this regard, Ganchozo carried out an investigation that allowed him to find icons or images in saddlebags and lollipops (small bags to carry coca or products that were to be exchanged). “These figures, which the researchers call” cups “(a triangle above and another below that touch each other on the tips and with others in the same position, form rhombuses) had a representation for the people. It was a kind of language thought. One triangle represents femininity and the other masculinity.” Ganchozo indicates that in the Coast the original language has been lost, but they found symbols that are equivalent to general thoughts that fit with the one of the current inhabitants.

“For example, in one of the researched stelae said: ‘Here lies part of the woman, part of nature. I give you back to mother earth. ‘It was a kind of interpretation of symbols, a general thought. ”

In another case, a fish can represent the power of its culture. That figure, as well as that of the anaconda and the jaguar are part of the myth of nature and should be told in some way, say the cultural managers.

Thus, the tissue, beyond being the medium in which they express their thoughts, begins to have sound, voice. “We try that this is not a mutation, but a kind of evolution, where I capture these living iconographies that go to the contemporary”.

The research of Ganchozo was presented in Guayaquil with the name Tejituras de Adentro, an exhibition that took five months of preparation, since it consists of four tissues, four meters long each, where it gave shape to an anaconda, a hummingbird, a fish and a jaguar. The material used was vegetable cellulose cut into small vertical and transverse sheets. (I)

Source: https://www.eltelegrafo.com.ec/noticias/sociedad/6/tejidos-pueblos-ancestrales-ecuador