Divine Archangel
Felipe Coaquira
2023
ABOUT THE ARTIST
The threads of life.
I still feel dreams that intertwine the past as reflection and curiosity, which transports me to the memories of my grandmother Nazaria, present in every fiber.
In 2000 after finishing a course of Visual Arts studies, motivated by a friend, I decided to travel to Chile. It was a start to my search of the pictorial in a period of illusions that engulfed me in a complex and diverse environment of migration. Perhaps the confrontation of the reality of economic stability as a priority played a decisive role in distancing me from art for a certain time. I remember the calm, the stability, and at the same time a small wink of frustration. The years passed by, and in 2005 I found out that Nazaria was leaving us. I hoped it to be only a dream, but it wasn’t. So, I decided to reconnect with art.
In 2015, an exhibit was organized in the city of Puerto Montt. In those days I received an invitation to a Mapuche loom workshop with the native people of Chile. Doubt was no impediment to this itinerary. Through my interactions with that community and introduction to their textiles, I was taken back to memories of my childhood, the years where I played with yarn, spindles spread on the ground, and messing up the braids of my grandmother Nazaria, who worked her loom to four stakes and other times tied at the waist. That memory was pleasant and was a beginning to the recognition of identity, linked with my parents who worked in sewing.
Wanting to discover more about fibers, I returned to Arequipa, this time to the villages of the Colca Valley, where textile embroidery is a skill of rich cultural value. This environment has been significant in my search for a more personal expression, accompanied by techniques that recreate woven works with thread and a sewing machine, a device that does nothing but follow a physical and intimate sequence.
The legacy of Nazaria, alive in each pattern, motivates me to use embroidery to communicate the patrimonial, collective, and social memory, transmitting textile art in a more contemporary way.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Exploring instincts and playing with a fusion of the unreal and unexpected, this piece recreates a dreamlike experience that transcends the manifestation of a famous marriage. The distortion of the arm on the archangel’s body questions logic, perhaps a symbol of power and musical mastery where the character transmits the magic of the song, ecstatic in an Andean village scene.
For me, textiles provide artistic freedom to reinvent our graphic memory, creating new narratives of our historical experiences and translating them to fiber. The duality between the modern sewing machine and the artistic practice of hand-embroidery shows us how technology can be intertwined with the traditional.
In this intimate production, allegorical connection between family weaving and artistic production reforms and revives inherited stories, spinning work, and embroidery, essential practices that reveal how hands can transform natural, synthetic fibers and recyclable textiles into objects heavy with meaning.
We hope to transmit the magic that embroidery with sewing threads can bring, enhancing the pictorial value through fiber and incorporating a new artistic dimension from the perspective of contemporary textile art.
MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES
Sewing threads and canvas treated with natural dyes.
Embroidery of sewing threads and textile collage.