Fátima Rodrigo: Piedra de sol, serpiente de humos

Throughout her practice, Rodrigo examines the myth of modernity as an antithesis to ‘non-Western’ cultures, and the hierarchical binaries that cast South American creative developments as separate and subordinate to the Western aesthetic tradition. For this exhibition, Rodrigo presents new textile works from her ongoing Contradanza series. Named after a traditional form of court music and dance brought to Latin America by Spanish colonisers, it took on folkloric forms when adopted by indigenous populations in Peru, becoming a symbol of joyful opposition and mockery against colonial oppression. Resplendent with jewels, beads, sequins and glittering metallic fabrics, Rodrigo’s textiles share their materials and colours with Peruvian costumes of traditional celebrations. Rodrigo enacts a carnivalesque subversion of power structures, creating space in the gallery for the syncretic visual language of modern-day celebrations in Peru and the ‘low culture’ materials of carnival parades, an example of a fluid evolution from indigenous and colonial practices. 

Rodrigo's textiles borrow from popular, traditional and contemporary iconography, to reclaim symbols routinely stripped of meaning for commercial uses, particularly by the fashion industry. For this exhibition, Rodrigo focuses on the symbol of the snake, its sinuous forms woven through each piece. A principal image in pre-Columbian art and ritual, the snake carried a multitude of meanings, including wisdom, luck, protection, fertility and death. Significantly, it represented a connector between worlds; pre-Hispanic Andean rituals and celebrations frequently incorporated ropes and charms evoking snakes, used to channel the life forces of ancestors from the underworld to the living.