“Do I speak in language?” The voice that asks has as its mother tongue something other than Spanish. He asks if speaking in his own language, that of the Wichí indigenous people, we, the “whites”, will be able to understand it. Should you lodge your ideas in an imposed language or can we do the translation? Will we try to understand honestly? Anabel Luna speaks in the language of her people about the images and the environment, about the fabric and the message (
silät
): they exist and they are alive. The Wichí women walk the mountains, they maintain their language and their fabric.
Since April, the artist Claudia Alarcón and Silät—a group of Wichí women whose name means message—will exhibit their works at the Venice Biennale at the invitation of its curator, Adriano Pedrosa. This year's title,
Foreigners Everywhere
, speaks of a vital foreignness, of diffuse territories in which identities overlap, of boundaries that become indistinguishable, of mixed cultures. “If we talk about indigenous people in the present, it is a big problem because it is assumed that the indigenous is past,” says Demóstenes Toribio, translator of the Wichí people, about the link between the Argentine State and its people, and about the idea that Argentina It's just white territory.
Between the Pilcomayo and Bermejo rivers, live the women who are part of Silät, in the chaco of northern Argentina. They live in the La Puntana and Alto La Sierra communities, in the Salta town of Santa Victoria Este. This is the first time that there is indigenous participation in the Biennial for Argentina and, in addition to entering the art world, the women hope to translate the recognition into better living conditions for their people. “May this be to give us, who live in these places, a way out, so that there are changes, access to drinking water and better nutrition, so that our children can have better levels of study and medication. Through what we do, we could open other opportunities for the future,” says Alarcón.
Silät is coordinated by Alarcón together with Melania Pereyra, although the group was born at the beginning of 2023, led by a hundred Wichí weavers of different ages and a
suluj
—white woman— who has known and accompanied them since 2017, Andrei Fernández. Laughing at her, they call her
chisuk
, which means rebel.
“I'm going to tell you what this thing that I do consists of and is called art for us, the indigenous women who live in these territories. It is nothing new, it is a very old activity and we know well the value that our work has,” says Alarcón. “We have been doing it for centuries and we understand the value it represents for having been part of the knowledge of our elders. His wisdom was lodged in their minds and in his thinking, and he has been able to maintain it to create the figures and names with which the fabrics that we know today are identified,” he adds.
Yica and art
The founding myth of the Wichí people says that water, which is life, was inside the yuchán tree, a white or yellow drunken stick. Inside, there was a gold fish. The story goes that a spear pierced the fish and the liquid that was in the tree spilled out, giving shape to what the world is today.
In Alarcón's spacious house in La Puntana hangs a yica, a woven bag for everyday use, whose dark background contrasts with the figure of the yuchán and the water inside, a representation of the myth. It is the sketch of another future work. “I wanted to try how it looked,” he explains. As they approached the world of art, the scale of the Wichí works changed; they began to test what happens to shapes when they work on large panels. In Venice, nine large cloths will be displayed that tell some of the founding legends of the Wichí people, such as that of the women who came down from the stars. There will also be a work with the yuchán of the origin of the world.
The words art and craft have no translation in Wichí. When hearing the language spoken, they are recognized by their use in Spanish. “That does not mean that the aesthetic dimension is not present,” says intercultural curator Fernández, who is part of
Silät
. “It is in the production of images and artifacts, but it does not necessarily play a role in the reason why they are made. Fidela Flores, a teacher and also a Wichí artisan, once told me that the yica is the craft, but that its art is in it.”
The separation between art and crafts is another imposed category, external to the indigenous universe, which for a long time was used to belittle artisanal works, to detract from them. What is a work of art? What are your rules? The traditional categories are dislocated with the invitation of the Wichí to the biennial.
Get to the mountain, live in it
As the road advances, the yunga, a green cloud forest, transforms into a more arid, less leafy mountain. The paved road turns into zigzagging dirt and on its sides rise cacti, carob trees and mistoles, although the traces of deforestation that threatens the biome are evident. The horizon is low in front of the road, everything is flat. The department of Rivadavia, in Salta, in which the La Puntana and Alto La Sierra communities are located, has a population density of 1.5 inhabitants per square kilometer, according to the last national census. It borders Bolivia and Paraguay.
The spaces are wide, difficult to grasp for someone accustomed to the urban form of the colonial checkerboard. The adobe houses are separated by fences made of peach sticks. In the morning, the beds are on the dirt patios because it is hot and it is better to sleep under the sky illuminated by a full moon. All human torsos are embraced by a yica. Every last inhabitant of the town wears one of those bags.
The women of Silät gather near the house they are rebuilding, Silätwuké, in La Puntana. The sun went down and they split a watermelon to eat while they talk. On a wooden bench, Fernández, Alarcón and Anabel Luna – another of the founders of Silät de La Puntana – sit because they are going to pray for them, for the trip to Venice. The first two will be the ones who go to the inauguration, representing the others, on April 20.
The shapes of some carob trees are outlined in the night sky. It is dark, but the figures of Alarcón and Fernández can be seen hugging each other, while Luna has her daughter lifted from her. The three of them are sitting on a wooden bench. The other women are standing, surrounding them. They sing, they pray in Wichí, every now and then the invocation to God is heard in Spanish. None of them can stop crying, not even the six-year-old girl who hugs her mother. The murmur comes from the mountain and can be heard in the distance. They, who wanted them to know that they were there, that the Wichí women live and exist in the mountains, feel that they have achieved it.
Be Wichí
“We Wichí are one of the ethnic groups with the largest population in Argentina,” says Toribio. “We owe a lot to our ancestors, we owe them the intelligence they had to continue looking for ways so that they would not annihilate us,” he adds. According to the last census, 69,080 people recognize themselves as Wichí, of which 45.9% live in Salta. “But we are more, we are always more. The State does not fully know how many indigenous people we are and the number is always a myth.”
“We have something called material poverty. The treatment, the mistreatment, the mistreatment are things that come together all the time because the indigenous thinks in the past. The State would have to find a way, accept that we exist and let us continue being Wichí, that we continue being indigenous because each one will know how to live as he is,” points out the translator.
The rights of the Wichí people are constantly violated. Without access to drinking water or nutritious food, in part due to the deforestation of the forest, or to a completely guaranteed bilingual education, Silät is in the process of consolidating its legal status to be able to start other projects. “We want to generate materials that are useful for teachers who work in Wichí territory, set up a healthy food point in the mountains. We believe that it is key that everything that is being achieved with fabrics translates into improving the quality of life,” explains Andrei Fernández.
The possibility of changing, of testing materials, of imagining and creating different works, of deciding how to transmit their heritage, how to become ancestors towards the future is a task that only falls to the people themselves. Wichí women weave with chaguar fiber - Bromelia hieronymi, a plant native to northern Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay - and natural dyes, but they also experiment with synthetic fibers, such as plastic, without any of the ancestral textile being lost in the new experience.
“When I start knitting, I remember that I am being indigenous, being what I am, this is what I have to share with you,” says Claudia Alarcón. In her latest works, a typical pattern of Wichi weaving, the mulita ear, is split to give a new shape, half a mulita ear that forms a zigzag. Ella Alarcón says that she likes it because they are new images of the future for her people, in forms, but also in deeper senses. A message that, when sent, manages to change reality.