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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2hYkysP:
OK, fair point, I’ve avoided using anything religion-related up to now. I’ve been really scrupulous about it. I didn’t think, and still don’t, of the drawing as being particularly religious, and I’ll explain why below.
I have an embroidered blouse my mom got as a tourist in the 70s with a really similar motif on it, and I was considering just taking a photo, but I actually figured it’d be more respectful to find a design and draw it myself, in case there was some meaning I didn’t understand about the embroidered blouse and its context.
It’s a decorative element, presented in the linked-to context with other decorations with speculations as to their meanings. There were several sources when I researched, and they had similar ones; most of them were taken from commercial items woven for tourists.
I picked that one to draw because I’m not a very good artist and it had the fewest lines. The source explains that it’s an element often found amid the decoration of the huipils worn by Church statues, for the most part, but the symbology is not thoroughly explained, and I didn’t look into it. I didn’t try to arrange it with other elements as it would be, in real use. I kept it in isolation and paired it with itself, just for decoration, and if I could have come up with something of my own instead, you bet I would have.
I’m not interested in plundering anyone’s heritage, I’m trying to find something thematically appropriate that I can actually manage to approximate a drawing of.
I haven’t written anything about it, or tried to. (Clearly, you didn’t read the story, so I guess I can stop worrying about that.)
I feel terrible (of course) about the way that the Maya have had so much of their way of life taken from them. I know they traditionally find it offensive for tourists to wear their clothes; Rigoberta Menchu mentions it in her autobiography, written in 1983:
This is part of the reserve that we’ve maintained to defend our customs and our culture. Indians have been very careful not to disclose any details of their communities, and the community does not allow them to talk about Indian things. I too must abide by this. This is because many religious people have come among us and drawn a false impression of the Indian world. We also find a ladino* using Indian clothes very offensive. All this has meant that we keep a lot of things to ourselves and the community doesn’t like us telling its secrets. This applies to all our customs.
But I also have found that basically all the information about Guatemala online nowadays is weaving collectives. That’s the way that the remaining Maya people have found to take charge of their own heritage and present themselves to the world. That’s how they’re empowering themselves and making a niche for themselves, after all of the genocide and the centuries of depredation, because it’s something that’s still left to them. It means sharing the images and the craftsmanship. The weaving collectives are overcoming their distaste for outsiders to let their craft speak for them, and the weavings have begun to be the face of the Maya to the outside world.
So that’s the spirit in which I picked up that element and duplicated it. I’ll certainly be careful, going forward, and it’s a good reminder.
OK, fair point, I’ve avoided using anything religion-related up to now. I’ve been really scrupulous about it. I didn’t think, and still don’t, of the drawing as being particularly religious, and I’ll explain why below.
I have an embroidered blouse my mom got as a tourist in the 70s with a really similar motif on it, and I was considering just taking a photo, but I actually figured it’d be more respectful to find a design and draw it myself, in case there was some meaning I didn’t understand about the embroidered blouse and its context.
It’s a decorative element, presented in the linked-to context with other decorations with speculations as to their meanings. There were several sources when I researched, and they had similar ones; most of them were taken from commercial items woven for tourists.
I picked that one to draw because I’m not a very good artist and it had the fewest lines. The source explains that it’s an element often found amid the decoration of the huipils worn by Church statues, for the most part, but the symbology is not thoroughly explained, and I didn’t look into it. I didn’t try to arrange it with other elements as it would be, in real use. I kept it in isolation and paired it with itself, just for decoration, and if I could have come up with something of my own instead, you bet I would have.
I’m not interested in plundering anyone’s heritage, I’m trying to find something thematically appropriate that I can actually manage to approximate a drawing of.
I haven’t written anything about it, or tried to. (Clearly, you didn’t read the story, so I guess I can stop worrying about that.)
I feel terrible (of course) about the way that the Maya have had so much of their way of life taken from them. I know they traditionally find it offensive for tourists to wear their clothes; Rigoberta Menchu mentions it in her autobiography, written in 1983:
This is part of the reserve that we’ve maintained to defend our customs and our culture. Indians have been very careful not to disclose any details of their communities, and the community does not allow them to talk about Indian things. I too must abide by this. This is because many religious people have come among us and drawn a false impression of the Indian world. We also find a ladino* using Indian clothes very offensive. All this has meant that we keep a lot of things to ourselves and the community doesn’t like us telling its secrets. This applies to all our customs.
But I also have found that basically all the information about Guatemala online nowadays is weaving collectives. That’s the way that the remaining Maya people have found to take charge of their own heritage and present themselves to the world. That’s how they’re empowering themselves and making a niche for themselves, after all of the genocide and the centuries of depredation, because it’s something that’s still left to them. It means sharing the images and the craftsmanship. The weaving collectives are overcoming their distaste for outsiders to let their craft speak for them, and the weavings have begun to be the face of the Maya to the outside world.
So that’s the spirit in which I picked up that element and duplicated it. I’ll certainly be careful, going forward, and it’s a good reminder.
