Local wares and textiles: modeling and weaving re-existences in the jesuit missions of the Amazon

Abstract

Memory, identity and ancestry, the arts of ceramics and textiles were present in the daily life of the Jesuit missions in the Amazon, moving the economy through pottery and weaving houses. These productions, local wares and textiles, as they are often mentioned in the documentation, depended on indigenous knowledge. The two artistic practices were interrelated, and involved others, such as, for example, the production of braids, gourds or varnishes and paints, closely connected to a deep knowledge of the nature of the Amazon region. In these creations, codes contained in traditional utilitarian and/or ritualistic objects also remained, which were transformed and re-signified; such as pots, pipes, hammocks, ornaments. In these transformations, which, in their complexities, can be verified through the study of materials, techniques, forms, decorative repertoires, different agencies, forces and consequent elements of the globalization process, and the imposition of the colonial system, act. The traditions consolidated in Europe, and those of Asian inspiration, arising from the global colonial dynamics, arriving already filtered to the American continent by the European taste – are evoked in the new objects, through clashes, negotiations and re-existences. The news gathered here aims to contribute so that the artistic practices of indigenous, Africans, and mestizos- considering the wide existing cultural diversities - are also inserted in the history of art of the colonial period, protagonists who were in the transmission and incorporation of this knowledge, in a creative and original way, between tradition and renewal, in the context of missions.