Crafting Gender

Women and Folk Art in Latin America and the Caribbean

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Edited by Eli Bartra

Duke University Press

Due/Published November 2003, 248 pages, paper

ISBN 0822331705

This volume initiates a gender-based framework for analyzing Latin American and Caribbean folk art. While folk art--which this collection defines broadly as the "art of the people" and as having a primarily decorative, rather than utilitarian, purpose--is not solely the province of women, folk art by women in Latin America has received little sustained attention. Crafting Gender begins to redress this gap. From a feminist perspective, the contributors examine not only twentieth-century and contemporary art by women, but also its production, distribution, and consumption. Exploring the roles of women as artists and consumers in specific cultural contexts, they look at a range of artistic forms from across Latin America, including Panamanian molas (textiles), Andean weavings, Mexican ceramics, and Mayan hipiles (dresses).

Art historians, anthropologists, and sociologists from Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States, the contributors discuss artwork from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Suriname. Many of the essays focus on indigenous artists. They highlight the complex webs of social relations from which folk art emerges. For instance, while several pieces describe the similar creative and technical processes of indigenous pottery-making communities of the Amazon and of mestiza potters in Mexico and Colombia, they also reveal the widely varying functions of the ceramics and meanings of the iconography. Integrating the many social, historical, political, geographical, and economic factors that shape folk art in Latin America and the Caribbean, Crafting Gender sheds light on a rich body of art and the women who create it.

Contributors : Eli Bartra, Ronald J. Duncan, Dolores Juliano, Betty LaDuke, Lourdes Rejón Patrón, Sally Price, Mar’a de Jesús Rodríguez-Shadow, Mari Lyn Salvador, Norma Valle, Dorothea Scott Whitten

"Crafting Gender deftly fills a gaping hole in gender studies by providing a rich body of information on women's traditional arts. Exploring the distinctions between art, 'folk art,' and just plain work in a great variety of cultures, the authors illuminate social context, belief systems, aesthetics, and technique, expanding the field to areas not well known outside of academia and Latin America. Feminists, artists, and scholars will find much material in Eli Bartra's book with which to mold and weave their own forms."--Lucy R. Lippard

"Crafting Gender is an original collection centered on the relationship of women and the production, distribution, and consumption of folk art in Latin America and the Caribbean. It presents in one volume several subjects generally treated separately, integrates them with a gender perspective, and offers an approach that is truly innovative."--Marysa Navarro