Exhibition "Claudia Alarcón & Silät: living by weaving"

O MASP — São Paulo Museum of Art Assis Chateaubriand displays Claudia Alarcón & Silät: living by weavingThe exhibition brings together 25 works that encompass the artistic production of Claudia Alarcón (La Puntaña, Argentina, 1989) & Silät, a collective formed by more than one hundred weavers from the Wichí people. Curated by Adriano Pedrosa, artistic director, MASP, and Laura Cosendey, assistant curator, MASP, the exhibition marks the debut of the artist and the group in a Brazilian museum.

The works are produced with chaguar fibers, a bromeliad with resilient fibers native to the semi-arid climate of the Gran Chaco, the largest biome in Latin America after the Amazon, which occupies the northern and northeastern regions of Argentina, extending into Paraguay. The preparation of the chaguar and the technique of interlacing the fibers by hand, without the use of a loom, come from the making of yica bags, a central object in Wichi culture. Traditionally, the yica has a square shape, with geometric patterns that represent the flora and fauna of its territory, alluding to themes such as armadillo ears, owl eyes, and turtle shells. Although this is the starting point of Alarcón & Silät's work, their pieces transcend this traditional repertoire. Starting from workshops that proposed thinking about new formats for yica bags, the Silät collective was organized in 2023, and began producing fabrics within an artistic context.

Historically, the textiles produced by the Wichí had earthy, reddish, and grayish-blue tones, but the artists began adding more intense colors with aniline dyes in the yarn preparation process, achieving exuberant shades of orange and fuchsia, for example. Another important innovation in Alarcón & Silät's work lies in the fabric production process itself: while traditionally women always wove individually, the members of Silät developed methods so that several members could work simultaneously on the same piece or continue the work of another weaver.

The mythology of the Wichí people also shapes the works of Alarcón & Silät. In Kates tsinhay — Mujeres estrellas [Star Women], 2023, Claudia Alarcón evokes the myth of the star women. The belief narrates that women were stars in the sky and descended to Earth every night on chaguar threads that they themselves had woven. They came to feed, stealing the fish that the men caught. When the men discovered this, they cut these threads, and the women remained on Earth. This work and others inspired by this symbolic narrative blend ancestral geometries with figurative elements to delineate stars, moons, celestial bodies, and starry skies.

“I recover legends and stories from our people, I feel there is much work to be revived. I think about how to recover this, because it is something that perhaps cannot be said orally, we cannot shout it. But the fabric also speaks. There are those who can understand or feel it in the fabric. I realized that, although we weave in silence, everything is said in the fabric,” comments Alarcón.

The Wichí people call their territory tayhi and consider it a fundamental part of their identity, possessing a spiritual and symbolic dimension. In Spanish, the name for the region is monte (mountain). However, although the name evokes mountains, the local terrain is mostly flat. Daily life, the wind, day, dusk, night, constellations, and many other elements of life on the mountain are present in the colors, organic and geometric forms of Alarcón & Silät's works. The weavers' sensitive gaze towards natural cycles portrays, in the abstraction Kyelhkyup — El otoño [Autumn], 2023, from the MASP collection, the changes in tones, textures, and light during the passage of the seasons on the mountain.

Weaving together, combined with the implemented innovations, made it possible to create textile compositions that bring a multiplicity of voices and colors, articulating traditional patterns with a contemporary visual and poetic repertoire. "The fabrics have become banners of struggle, standards that carry messages, stories, and give voice to the women of the community," says Laura Cosendey.

Both the individuality of the artists and the dimension of the collective are demonstrated in the installation Hilulis ta llhaiematwek — Un coro de yicas [A Chorus of Yicas] (2024-25), which brings together more than one hundred bags, each produced by a member of the group. The personal choices of color and pattern are highlighted when the works are displayed side by side, while the joint presentation reinforces the political character of the collective's articulation, which made it possible to criticize issues such as the devaluation of ancestral knowledge and the precariousness of the weavers' work.

In the exhibition, the works are presented in frames or on vertical wooden structures, which allude to the way these fabrics are produced and, occasionally, displayed in the community where the weavers live. The set N'äyhay wet layikis — Caminos y cicatrizes [Paths and Scars] is one of the works exhibited in this exhibition format proposed by MASP. The textile composition was conceived by the collective in 2025 for July 9th, the day on which Argentina's independence is celebrated. The artistic creation was woven by the women to denounce the violent repression committed over time by the Argentine State against indigenous populations.

Claudia Alarcón & Silät: Living Weaving is part of MASP's annual program dedicated to Latin American Histories. The year's agenda also includes exhibitions by La Chola Poblete, Sandra Gamarra Heshiki, Santiago Yahuarcani, Colectivo Acciones de Arte, Damián Ortega, Sol Calero, Carolina Caycedo, Pablo Delano, Rosa Elena Curruchich, Manuel Herreros and Mateo Manaure, Jesús Soto, and an international group exhibition.

Service
Exhibition | Claudia Alarcón & Silät: living by weaving
From March 06th to August 02nd
Free admission on Tuesdays from 10 am to 20 pm (entry until 19 pm); Wednesdays and Thursdays from 10 am to 18 pm (entry until 17 pm); Fridays from 10 am to 21 pm (free entry from 18 pm to 20:30 pm); Saturdays and Sundays from 10 am to 18 pm (entry until 17 pm); closed on Mondays.

Online booking is mandatory via the link masp.org.br/ingressos