Tejedora Mapuche
Artist name
Artist year born
Artist year deceased
Artwork title translation
Artwork material
translucent paper
Artwork dimensions
width: 23cm
Artwork type (categories)
Accession method
Accession number
Label text
Hermosilla's Mapuche weaver sits at an upright loom fashioned from rough-cut branches. She wears a full set of the traditional Mapuche jewellery: a trarilonka, a headband decorated with disks, large earrings or chawai, a trapelakucha, an elaborate pendant on her breast, and a tupu pin holding her manta in place. Her strong profile draws attention to her native Andean blood and together with the details of her costume links this work to the indigenismo movement prevalent in other countries with strong native traditions, particularly Peru and Ecuador, during the earlier decades of the twentieth century.
This bold linocut brings together two of Hermosilla's lifelong interests - the human face and the traditional culture of Chile - which first found expression in 1932 in a book of woodcuts entitled 'Caras de la Raza' (Faces of Race).
Valerie Fraser