Feminist Pottery and the Imagined Nation

Indigenous clay vessels from Quinchamalí, Chile may appear merely decorative or functional, but they have also been used as repositories for memories and symbols of social justice.

It is predominantly women from Quinchamalí who produce representational pottery, having done so since at least the 16th century. Over time their designs have evolved, unfolding layered meanings and emotions for Chileans even outside the region where the pots are made. In the last century, the Quinchamalí style has become an emblem of the struggle for social justice as well as a source of inspiration for contemporary artists.

This digital exhibition explores Quinchamali pottery from four narrative viewpoints, to emphasise that the same subject matter can be presented and understood differently. There is free movement between each thread, however, to allow the viewer to engage as they like with the information provided.

Ancestral

am1909,1218.29 ©Trustees of the British Museum

South American indigenous groups from the Pacific coast produced representational pottery long before European contact. The Chimu and Moche peoples, for example, used the globular shape of containers as the baseline for their representations of humans, animals and plants.

Chimu people, in particular, prioritized the representation of daily life and social organization. In doing so, their pottery became a physical account of their power relations, social hierarchies and domestic traditions. This vessel, for example, represents a prisoner lying on his front with his arms and legs bound and crossed behind him.

am1909,1218.29 ©Trustees of the British Museum

The shapes of Chimu and Moche representational figures are adaptations of the moulds used for the elaboration of containers. For this reason, they are frequently categorized as utilitarian. But the creative processes required in the elaboration of the representations has challenged this divide between the arts and the utilitarian “craft”.

Moche portrait vessels, such as this one, are famous for depicting highly individualized and detailed heads of men, while the bodies remain abstracted and embedded within the vessel.

am1941,04.65 ©Trustees of the British Museum

Both Moche and Chimu vessels depict people, but facial features in Chimu works are abstracted, emphasizing the representation of activities rather than portraits, as in Moche figures.

Women are frequently represented performing activities related to motherhood, such as breastfeeding or rocking their babies, and sometimes are shown carrying their children in a woven bag over their shoulders. The domestic context of these depictions is an illustration of women’s positioning in Chimu society. This vessel, for example, represents a woman rocking her child.

am1933,0511.14 ©Trustees of the British Museum

While Chimu potters relied on abstraction for their representations, Moche works sometimes incorporate figures that realistically follow the shapes of vessels, prioritizing detail. Both forms of representational pottery have persisted until today, as they offer a greater purpose than the purely aesthetic, becoming agents for the continuation of traditions and material archives of daily life.

This bottle, representing a gourd, is an example of Moche natural realism. It illustrates that gourds were common in the Moche diet and in the production of containers for food and drink.

practice

am1919,1104.19-20 ©Trustees of the British Museum

The pottery tradition from Quinchamali and Chillan, in central Chile, originated during the colonial period. The style results from the combination of indigenous techniques including Mapuche, Moche and Chimu, with criollo and mestizo representational elements about rural life and local tales.

The production techniques and styles of Quinchamali figures have been preserved for centuries, becoming a form of material heritage for the region. As such, the figures have become appealing to consumers beyond Quinchamali, including international collectors. For example, this mate cup representing a dove was acquired by the British Museum in the year 1919, and similar colours, shapes and themes continue to be produced in local workshops.

Image by Evelyn Rozas Erbo

As with Moche and Chimu traditions, Quinchamali representational pottery is also based on adapted containers, but the value of these objects rests mostly on their capacity to generate emotion, to convey the memories of their producers, and to evoke the Chilean rural life, rather than in their utilitarian use.

However, as most Quinchamali designs are repeated and commercialized, the figures continue to be categorized as crafts, or “artesanias”, rather than as artworks. Different versions of La guitarrera, for example, are regularly produced in Quinchamali.

Image by Evelyn Rozas Erbo

The producers of Quinchamali pottery are mostly women, locally known as “loceras”. In the past, the trade was reserved to widows who became financially independent after the loss of their partners. Today, local women are sharing their knowledge with their daughters, nieces and granddaughters, and the production of figures has become a form of economic and social empowerment for rural women.

The preservation of the tradition is also connected with the continuation of their indigenous identity, which includes a distinct worldview, a family system based on the transmission of knowledge, and a particular perception of the outside world.

Image by Claudia PM Santibanez ©Museo del Mundo

La guitarrera, shown here, is the most iconic figure from Quinchamali. It represents a woman holding a guitar and wearing clothes engraved with floral and geometric patterns. La guitarrera is a singing woman, the main character of a local tale that speaks about music, falling in love with a treacherous stranger, and the pain of being deceived and abandoned. Local women have found in “La guitarrera” a representation of their resilience and their ability to bring joy to their communities despite the struggles and hardships of rural life in a politically unstable Chile.

social

Image by Evelyn Rozas Erbo

The formation of the Chilean nation in the XIX century was part of an oligarchic program of identity unification. Within this program, indigenous and mestizo cultures were deemed inferior and discouraged. A counter-hegemonic movement emerged in the 1950s among local thinkers, activists and artists. Through their work, they aimed to restore the value of diversity, giving visibility to local cultural expressions.

The ceramic figures from the town of Quinchamali are some of the expressions of local culture that became national symbols of a re-emerging indigenous heritage. This pig [el chancho de tres patas] is, alongside La Guitarrera, one of the most representative figures.

Image by Kena Lorenzini

Many Chileans fleeing the Pinochet regime in the 1970s and 1980s brought Quinchamali figures to the countries they settled in. They did this as a reminder of their struggle for cultural and political freedom.

Among the various designs, La Guitarrera conveyed the most meanings and emotions among the diaspora. It became a well-known design within Chilean popular art, a marker for those resisting the regime. In doing so, La guitarrera left the realm of the craft, or artesania, to become a form of art, a memory connector between those who stayed in Chile fighting for freedom and those forced to leave.

Item 000013 ©Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos

La guitarrera is of particular importance to the women of the Chilean diaspora. According to the tale that inspired the design, a singing woman was abandoned by her loved man, but she continued singing despite her terrible pain. During the regime, many men disappeared and their deaths were never accounted for by the military. Their wives and mothers found in La Guitarrera a symbol of their struggle for justice.

Women also denounced these disappearances through the performance of La Cueca Sola, dancing with pictures of their family members; and through the elaboration of arpilleras, patchwork tapestries that illustrate their struggle. This arpillera, for example, shows women wearing images of their lost husbands.

La Guitarrera was associated with the performers of Chilean protest song and literature during the second half of the 20th century. Violeta Parra, for example, acknowledged the significance of La guitarrera by incorporating its story and symbolism to her songs and visual art. Pablo Neruda, who experienced persecution and exile, wrote the poem Una Senora de Barro to celebrate La Guitarrera.

These attitudes towards Quinchamali pottery led to its reception by art galleries and museums despite its original association with rural and indigenous life, utilitarian objects and design repetition. This image is of the exhibition: “Quinchamali en el Imaginario Nacional”, at the Museo de Arte Popular Americano, in Santiago.

expression

Evelyn Rozas is a Chilean contemporary artist who has found inspiration in La guitarrera. She produced an alternative version of Paul Ruben’s The Three Graces to question the idealization of women in the traditional European canon, as well as Europe’s abandonment of clay within the fine arts.

Ruben’s The Three Graces show the Greek goddesses of pleasant charm, charity and gratitude, attributes mostly assigned to females in the 15th century. The graces were reproduced by many artists, including this version by Pieter de Jode (1600s), but the naked goddesses are always seen in an idyllic natural space, disconnected from the gender, class and legal disparities that complicate women’s lives.

Image by Evelyn Rozas Erbo

Rozas’ Las Tres Gracias is a series of four ceramic sculptures in the distinctive Quinchamali style and resembling La Guitarrera, but equipped with items that represent women’s contemporary issues and interests.

The artist learned the Quinchamali pottery technique directly from local women. This style, which originated from utilitarian pottery and was first seen as artesania and then as popular art, has become a versatile and powerful medium for contemporary artists such as Rozas, adding cultural diversity and rural consciousness to the art scene in Chile.

Image by Evelyn Rozas Erbo

Rozas disrupted the representation of the female proper to the European baroque by making her graces abstract, dressed up and subversive. After all, the issues they are representing are long term outcomes of European modernity experienced today in Chile and Latin America as a whole.

The series Las Tres Gracias uses representational pottery to challenge development, consumerism, subordination, and the struggle of women to have a political voice. The woman-military represents Pinochet’s repression, the woman-consumer represents neoliberalism, the woman-house represents imposed domesticity, and the woman-activist represents protest.

Image by Evelyn Rozas Erbo

The woman-activist is wearing a gas mask to stand the violent actions of the military during street mobilizations in Chile and throughout Latin America. Having a political voice to claim for free education, women’s health rights and professional equality are still deemed less relevant in the region, so the mask represents how exercising the right to protest is particularly difficult for women.