We look at art from both sides now
We look at art from both sides now

Don’t take our word for it.

Beginning in 1935, German-born Josef Albers, colour theorist and one of the most influential twentieth-century artists and teachers, travelled to Mexico—fourteen times. Half of his visits were to Oaxaca. Josef and his wife Anni, a designer and weaver, held the textile traditions of indigenous peoples in high esteem.

We felt the same way after visiting Museo Textil de Oaxaca.

The two-storey museum is housed in a mansion build by a Spanish merchant who earned his fortune exporting cochineal, the red dye made from bugs that was once more precious than gold—the dye that Indigenous Mexicans use in their weaving. The mansion was enlarged to house a cultural centre, hotel and the museum, which opened in 2008. 

Three exhibitions were on view when we visited.

Textile Op Art

A Mexican sarape collected by Anni and Josef on one of their visits inspired “The Power of an Afterimage: Textile Op Art at Museo Textil de Oaxaca.” Op Art originated in the 1960s in the work of Bauhaus artists like Josef. The exhibition we saw celebrated indigenous weavers from around the world who threaded optical illusions into their weaving.

Dressing is also a Battleground

At first glance, if you didn’t understand the title of the second exhibition, “Lhall xallona lliu ‘tuse, illine llliu walh/Vestir También es un de lucha” you could be forgiven for thinking it was just a show of nicely embroidered women’s clothing. Like me.

“Dressing is also a Battleground” aimed to show the complex meanings of women’s clothing in a collective society, clothing being a symbol of both belonging and resisting. How practical is wearing a white dress? Is it important to wear an embroidered apron?

Reverses

But the most intriguing of the three exhibitions was “Reverses.”

A weaving normally has only one “right” side, the obverse. The reverse side shows the structure, what usually looks like a mishmash of coloured threads, knots and strings. Not here.

Remarkably, the artist Liliana Paola Pinzón Palafox converts the obverse into the reverse and vice versa. Her weavings have no right side, no back side. She turns her warp around with each new weft, placing different designs and colours on opposite sides of the fabric—something she’s been doing since she was fifteen years old.

Liliana is a member of the Huave (“Sea People”) from San Mateo del Mar, a peninsula in the southern part of the state of Oaxaca.

At the age of eight, she started weaving on a backstrap loom, eager to learn something new and help her mother, who was an excellent weaver. By the time she was in high school, Liliana knew the three weaving techniques: continuous, discontinuous and double view.

While working in a textile store in the city of Oaxaca, when it wasn’t busy she was allowed to work on her own designs, her imagination guided by her culture, her people, the beach, fishermen and farmers.

Liliana, who teaches workshops on backstrap-loom weaving to young people in her community, told an interviewer that “the threads her mother wove fed her inquisitive mind to open the way to a path full of possibilities.”

In Spanish, the word reves can mean both “reverse” and “setback.”

But Liliana’s work has no hidden side, no reverse, no setback. Instead, we see her dexterity and imagination—magically on both sides.

Navigation

Blue Toad showcases Liliana’s work.

Feria Maestros del Arte did a profile on Liliana.

Friends of Oaxacan Folk Art also displays Lilian’s weavings. In 2022 when she was twenty-four years old, Liliana won third place in the “Other Textiles” category as you can see here.

Earlier this month, The Globe and Mail did a feature on textile exhibitions in Canada. At the Remai Modern in Saskatoon until February 8, 2025, is ‘Kaja Sanelma Harris: Warp & Weft’, 24 panels depicting the Canadian landscape. At the Art Gallery of Ontario until January 19, 2025, is ‘Pacita Abad’, the first North American retrospective of the Filipina artist. Until March 28, 2025, the Textile Museum of Canada in Toronto is featuring ‘Beyond the Vanishing Maya: Voices of a Land in Resistance’. Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction’ continues to March 2, 2025, at the National Gallery of Canada. And next year on February 8, ‘Joyce Wieland: Heart On’ will open at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Josef and Anni Albers Foundation

Museo Textil de Oaxaca

Revista Peronae notes that Liliana is a graduate in Pedagogy.

2 Responses

  1. Amazing work and what story. Thank you!
    When we lived in San Diego we often walked across the border and visited the local artists. All my diplomas were framed in Mexico.
    The last trip I almost had to ship Rosy back to Belgium or Canada ( while pregnant!) because her Visa had expired! Another story for another time.

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