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Copyright by Meredith Gardner Clark 2012 The Dissertation Committee for Meredith Gardner Clark Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Warping the Word and Weaving the Visual: Textile Aesthetics in the Poetry and the Artwork of Jorge Eduardo Eielson and Cecilia Vicuña Committee: Luis Cárcamo Huechante, Co-Supervisor Enrique Fierro, Co-Supervisor Jossiana Arroyo Jill Robbins Charles Hale Regina Root Warping the Word and Weaving the Visual: Textile Aesthetics in the Poetry and the Artwork of Jorge Eduardo Eielson and Cecilia Vicuña by Meredith Gardner Clark, B.A.; M. A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2012 Dedication I dedicate this thesis to my family and my friends. Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge all of the professors on my committee who have guided me through this research project from its germination to its completion. I thank Enrique Fierro for his unwavering support, countless hours of conversation and for being my poetry professor. My tremendous gratitude also goes to Luis Cárcamo Huechante for his scholarly expertise, his time and his attention to detail. To Jossiana Arroyo and Jill Robbins, I offer my appreciation for their support from day one, and I would also like to thank Regina Root for providing me with valuable resources regarding Andean textiles and Charles Hale for taking a chance on an unknown graduate student. My gratitude is also in store for Cecilia Vicuña for her support and for her artistic vision. At this time, I would also like to acknowledge all of my family and my friends for their love and support. To my grandmother, Janet Mae Gardner, to my parents, Billy, Linda, John and Colleen and to my Aunt Virginia, I offer my utmost appreciation and my love. I also would like to thank my sister Jordan for always lending me her ear and my beloved friends, Becky Thompson, Scott Spinks, Alanna Breen, Mandy Newell, Nicole Serdenes and Charlotte Oliver for making me laugh. Additionally, my gratitude goes out to my flighted friend Olive whose happy song brightens my day and to the Dear family and mi familia chilena for treating me like one of their own. Last but not least, I thank my dear Cory Dear for his endless love and support. v Warping the Word and Weaving the Visual: Textile Aesthetics in the Poetry and the Artwork of Jorge Eduardo Eielson and Cecilia Vicuña Meredith Gardner Clark, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2012 Supervisors: Luis Cárcamo Huechante and Enrique Fierro The present work explores the presence of Andean textile imagery in the poetry and the visual art of Jorge Eduardo Eielson and Cecilia Vicuña with the goal of illustrating how these woven aesthetics enrich the content of the written word and other artistic media by supplementing them with non-verbal, visual and tactile planes of meaning. Through the discourse of the thread, Eielson and Vicuña generate an alternative means of expression that dialogues with the conventionality of human language, the creation of cultural memory and the connection between intercultural groups. To prove this thesis, I approach the authors’ poetry and visual art based on theoretical and cultural studies regarding the materiality and the visuality of the text and other media in combination with a comparative analysis of the structural and the design properties of Andean and indigenous cloth products, namely the tejido and the khipu. In addition to close readings of poems that illustrate how the presence of the textile augments the meaning of the written text, I also illustrate how Andean weaving aesthetics vi provide the metaphorical springboard of comparison upon which a critical analysis of their visual art is based. vii Table of Contents List of Illustrations ...................................................................................................x Introduction…………………………………………………………………..….…1 Chapter 1 Jorge Eduardo Eielson, Cecilia Vicuña and the Andean Textual-Textile Imagination……………………………………………………………….....15 The Andean Textile: Material and Metamorphosis .....................................15 The Khipu…………………………………………………………………...24 Embodying Knowledge: Textiles and Written Texts………………….…...26 Cultural Semantics in Textiles………………………….…………..……….33 Khipu Coding…………………………………………………………….…44 Gender and Agency in Textile Production…………………………….……48 The Poetic Imaginary of the Textile…………………………………….…..51 Chapter 2 Weaving Surfaces: Jorge Eduardo Eielson's Written Textiles ............54 Media in Eielson's Poetry .............................................................................58 Visuality and the Textual-Textile Interface ..................................................71 The Discursive Weaving of Opposites………………………………....…..97 Chapter 3 Performing Weaving in Cecilia Vicuña's Poetry................................120 Weaving, Writing and Speaking in La Wik'uña and Palabra e hilo ...........124 Weaving with Words on the Poetic Frontier in PALABRARmas and I tu ..152 Chapter 4 Khipu Aesthetics in the Artwork of Jorge Eduardo Eielson and Cecilia Vicuña .........................................................................................................182 The Visual: What We See in the Artwork of Eielson and Vicuña…….....183 Eielson's Art in Context ..............................................................................185 Vicuña and the Chilean Exile Context ........................................................192 The Tactile and the Double Nature of Seeing and Feeling………..….…...198 Surfaces and the Body…………………………………...………………...207 Remembering the Forgotten and Creating New Meaning……...…………212 viii Conclusion………………………….……………………………………...……222 Works Cited .........................................................................................................233 Vita……………. ..................................................................................................242 ix List of Illustrations Illustration 1.1: Diagram of a back-strap loom used in Peru……………………21 Illustration 1.2: A khipu from the collection of the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino..............................................................................25 Illustration 2.1: “poesía en forma de pájaro” with added marks for reference.....73 Illustration 2.2: “poesía en A Mayor” with added marks for reference………....86 Illustration 3.1: “alba / habla”………………………………………….…...….169 Illustration 3.2: “palabra / estrella”……………………………………...….…..171 Illustration 3.3: “tiempo / madre”.……………………………………...….…...173 Illustration 4.1: J. E. Eielson. Quipus 15 az-1, 1965…………………...……...188 Illustration 4.2: Cecilia Vicuña. Quipu huérfano, 2009……………….…..…..195 Illustration 4.3: Jorge Eduardo Eielson. Quipus 24b2, 1966……………….….207 Illustration 4.4: Cecilia Vicuña. “Ceq'e”…………………………………….…209 Illustration 4.5: Cecilia Vicuña. Quipu in the Gutter, 1989…………………...213 Illustration 4.6: Jorge Eduardo Eielson. Alfabeto, 1973………………….……215 x Introduction Weaving words together on the page and fibers together in their visual art, Jorge Eduardo Eielson (Lima, 1924-2006) and Cecilia Vicuña (Santiago de Chile, 1948) play upon the associations between writing, weaving, the visual and the tactile. Their poetic works generate alternative perspectives regarding language, media and cultural memory. While varying characteristics of textile aesthetics appear in their poetic and their plastic opuses, the most recurring figures are the knot in Eielson’s opus and the string in Vicuña’s artistic production. In his 2002 publication of Nudos, Eielson speculates the signifying properties of the knot with the verses, “Nudos que no dicen nada / Y nudos que todo lo dicen” (322). Similarly, Vicuña addresses the relationship between the string and the word with a verse from her 1997 publication of Palabra e hilo: “La palabra es un hilo y el hilo es el lenguaje.” With these verses, both authors suggest that weaving and language remain intricately entwined. As a non-alphabetic media, the Eielson illustrates that the knot literally does not say anything; however, due to its capacity for storing meaning, it does “silently” perform everything. Moreover, Vicuña’s verses which balance like a teeter- totter along the fulcrum of the repeated verb es illustrate that words and strings can be contextualized in a homologous relationship despite their obvious differences in form and material. While Eielson and Vicuña allude to Andean tejidos and khipus through direct naming or through the use of fabrics in their plastic works, their written and their visual 1 art also incorporates an often unrecognized layer of textile aesthetics that provides a non- verbal and a non-traditional representation of meaning through spatial, visual and tactile metaphors. This study explores the presence of the Andean textile imagery in the poetic and the visual works of Jorge Eduardo Eielson and Cecilia Vicuña with the goal of illustrating how these woven aesthetics enrich the content of the written word and other artistic media by supplementing them with non-verbal, visual and tactile planes of meaning. To prove this thesis, I approach the authors’ poetry based on theoretical and cultural studies regarding the materiality and the visuality of the text in combination with a comparative analysis of the structural and the design properties of Andean and indigenous cloth products, namely the tejido and the