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Miguel MESA POSADA 9 Rue Trousseau Chez D. Naranjo 75011 Paris, France (+33) 6 50 36 31 54 miguelmesaposada@gmail.com miguel.mesa@ehess.fr
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M I G U E L
M E S A
P O S A D A
PORTFOLIO 2013
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2017
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POTOSÍ 2nd year 2013
OTRAMINA 2016
A LT I P L A NO 3rd year 2014
HORIZONTES 4th year 2015
POZAHUANCO 2015
RECONSTRUCTED STELLA 2017
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POTOSÍ “Soy el rico Potosí, del mundo soy el tesoro, soy el rey de los montes y envidia soy de los reyes” // Carlos V
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POTOSÍ a. Ar t s of Fa s h i o n C o m p e t i t i o n 2 0 14 , Sa n Fran ci sco , USA. 1 . “ M ar mato” ( 2 0 1 3 ) Ba ck cover o f Fa s hion The or y , Vo l u m e n 1 8 , # 5. © 2 0 14 Bloom sbury Publ i sh i n g PL C.
Potosí in spanish means “unmeasurable wealth”, and it is as well the name of the richest silver mine ever known on earth, located in Bolivia, exploited for centuries, giving plenty of silver to the spanish crown; but taking away thousands of indigenous and Afro-American lives. Today the mine is still used, but the town’s decadence is bigger than the profits.
The feeling of caryatids with aboriginal traits come to life with paths that simulate geological strata in open pit mining. The images of woman-columns that rise to keep a building of cosmographical knowledge standing are taken metaphorically and physically; to imagine those Andean virgins-mountains as holders of mestizo heritage.
It is a collection of woven and not-written stories, where the fiber’s geology covers and heals those mining/body lacerations. Commercial mining has meant a loss more than anything else for the greater part of Latin American people; excavations are seen as metaphorical scars to America itself/herself.
The collection was made out of cottonwaste-threads, all dyed, and then quilted with cotton organza and paper; sewn together. Speculating about the idea of mining as seeing underneath, and contrasting with woven-treasures and non-metallic-abundance.
Paper reveals that underneath the surface it is indeed possible to find wealth; but contrary of the richness perceived by satellites, it is a woven abundance that lies as a true treasure. The feeling of caryatids with aboriginal traits comes to life with paths that simulate geological strata in open pit mining. Revealing the wealth of our cotton-woven past of oral-transmitted wisdom. •9•
Virgen de la Montaña , huile sur toile 175 cm x 135 cm Bolivia, XVIII Casa de la Moneda de Potosí
“The use of satellite imagery in mineral exploration, generally a combination of panchromatic and multispectral image data has been used in mineral and petroleum industries over the last decade. With higher resolution satellite sensors increasing over the last decade such as GeoEye-1 (0.41m) and WorldView-2 (0.46m) both providing panchromatic and multispectral full color imagery that is used to utilize enhanced spectral analysis for mapping, monitoring and analyzing landcover classification and extraction of culture data, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) classification and mapping, lithological classification, change detection, environmental monitoring, development, land-use planning, visualization and simulation environments such as digital elevation models (DEMs) and 3d terrain modeling.”
2 -3. 2-3. NA SA /G S F C / M E T I / Ja p a n S p a c e Syst em s, a n d U. S . / Ja pa n A S T ER S c i e n c e Te a m
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OTRAMINA OTRAMINA is an evolution of Potosí. Between public documents found around the Nueva Granada, some of them regarding inheritance distribution: One serves as a testimony of exchange rates in terms of value between textiles or clothes and jewelry. Apparently, given the high amounts of precious metals and the lack of a textile industry in ancient Colombia: jewels, such a pair of gold and emerald earrings were worth less than a small silk handkerchief. In a way of denying the real price and wealth of the gold in which some indigenous communities would cover their body and then wash themselves.
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A LT I P L A N O
“ L a d e st r u c c ión d e los íd olos y t emp los fu e c o s a fá c il, p u e s la ma y or ía e s t a ba hec ha d e ma t e r ia l p e re c e d e ro” // Ge r a rd o Re i c h e l-Do l m a t o f f
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A LT I P L A N O 1 0-1 1 . I nt e rn ation al F ashio n S ho wc ase L on d on , E n gl an d. ( 20 15 ) 1 2 . Ut o pian B o d i e s : F a s hi o n l o o k s f o r w a r d St o c k h o l m , Swe d e n . ( 20 15 -20 16 )
Altiplano is a post-archeological approach that is built on speculation: what could the archeologist have found and could not describe or what could a futuristic impression of the Muisca dress —which uses a single piece of rectangular cloth wrapped around the body— be. The common obsession with the exotic treasure idea, has meant that in Colombia, for example, there is indeed a “Gold Museum” (Museo del Oro), widely known and strongly supported by the government, but few museums that go deep into pre-hispanic way of living, of ceramics, basketry, bone or textiles; stand of small donations and are not as well-known; because the objects shown are not “pretty” and their original charm can not be entirely restored.
Each dress is an abstraction of a traditional ceramic typology among pre-Hispanic cultures, translated onto a textile material commonly used in tire construction; here thinking of the future of archeological treasures: how will tires be treated as museum objects in years to come? How much will they “mean”? This collection aims to ask questions around the simplest elements used in the everyday life of pre-Hispanic cultures: small as they stand, complex in technique, strong in meaning and probably consumed by time.
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A L T I P L A N O
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ALTIPLANO leather
Sh oes an d h eadpi eces were creat ed wi t h t h e i d ea of bam bus a cei li n gs i n m i n d; t h e m ost com m on way of arch i t ect ure i n t h e Mui sca pl a t e a u , n owa d ays c o n s i d e re d c h e a p a n d l owclass. Bam busa i s a m at eri al k n own as bot an i cal st eel; t h ey seek t o ex plore t h e t en si on bet ween t h e s t ren gt h an d f lex i bi li t y of m a t eri a ls — leat h er (sh oes) an d M DF ( h eadpi eces) Th e f requen t t ri pod way of st an di n g-vases, were t urn ed i n t o h eels. Agai n , t h i n k i n g of t h e f ut ure of pre-h i s pa n i c m a t eri a l cult ure. ( Th e f abri c was m a de i n a colla bora t i on wi t h En k a de Colom bi a . Th e sh oes an d h eadpi eces i n a collaborat i on wi t h TuTaller O f i ci n a de Di señ o)
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L T I P L A N O
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HORIZONTES “ Po r e s o c u a n d o me mu e ra me mor iré d e a r ro g a nc ia c a nt á nd ole a mi t e r r u ño c on a r monía y e l e g a n c ia , c u a l c a n t a n los a zu le jos c on r ít mic a re s ona nc ia o c omo c a nt a e l s ins ont e , d e s a fia nd o a la d is t a n c ia ” / / / Je s ú s A n t o n i o A r i s t i z a b e l S e r n a , ” El c a n t o r d e l a m o n t a ñ a ”
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HORIZONTES
1 3. D e M o da Peri ód i c o E l Co l o m bi a n o . Me d e l l í n , C o l o m b i a . ( 20 15 )
In the XVI century conquerors and explorers of the Americas wrote admiringly about the exotic items they saw on their trips, the grandeur of the landscape and the difficulties of the territory. The collection is based in a famous painting called “Horizontes”(1913), that aims to commemorate of the first 100 years of Independence from Spain, while showing a process called “Antioquia’s colonization”: large families trying to master deep forest for a living, carrying all their belongings in an XIX European/ Amerindian-nomadic-in-thetropics expedition, generating a new mythology and relationship with the land, they were -and are still- called: Arrieros. The first arrieros lived daily with these timeless charms and curses; the same ones that awakened a naif mestizaje between men and mountains. Stories that suggest Amerindian minds with a celestial map “print” on the DNA mixed with the “line of the horizon”, so
commonly used in western drawing/ architectural lessons, could mean also a metissage of perspectives towards the optics of landscape. Allegories of America, feathered women that still exist in the local and global imaginary, wearing Furcraea Andina, nylon, cotton and wool: shared and spinned in Marulanda, Caldas (Col.) following the traditional processes since 1890. Sharing the idea of animization in garments used among Amerindians, where adding characteristics of animal’s physical appearance can mean “earning” some of their being; here mixing fabric composition/ origin percentages could be another approach to that thought. The image of the De Bry’s savage is “abused” and the collection wants to turn that non-civilized image into a start point for a post-modern tropical/ antioqueña speculation.
Accessories were made in a collaboration with Daniel Ramos Obregón in Bogotá, Col. Fabrics were all made in the workshop of Artesanías JAAR in Marulanda, Caldas, Col.
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H O R I Z O N T E S
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P OZ A H UA NC O “ C o mo u n a p in t u ra nos ire mos bor ra nd o. C o mo u n a f lo r n o s, nos ire mos s e c a nd o a q u í s o bre la t ie r ra ” // Po e s í a Ná h u a t l .
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Siége au “El Museo Textil de Oaxaca”, á Pinotepa de Don Luis.
P O Z A H UA N C O M u se o Te x t i l d e O ax a c a. Ave c l e s o u t i e n d e E r i c C h áve z e t L oren a de la P i ed r a .
Located in south-west Oaxaca, México, at twelve hours from Oaxaca City. Pinotepa de Don Luis is world-known because of the “wrap-around” woven on blackstrap loom skirts wore by women of all ages- called Pozahuanco-. Traditionally mixing the “tree Mexican colors”: purple from a special mollusks species, Purpura Pansa; blue from Indigofera Suffruticosa; crimson from Dactylopius Coccus or cochinilla grana. Pozahuancos could be considered wearable-flags; since they can easily tell the geographical origin of a person when looking at the stripes of the skirt; a sort of patriotic manifesto. As well the query of patternmaking conception when there are just stripes of fabric was nonetheless important, since they can tell when a garment is well or ill-fitted. I also wondered around the idea of mathematical knots that was visible, theoretically, in the act of dressing with these four-selvedge cloths in tandem with the body. In dyeing with Purpura Pansa, the dyer’s life is at risk, the quantities of the small mollusks are limited and each year lower, the weather conditions are extremely hot, only during four months is possible to extract it’s “milk” (as it is popularly called the taint), and
the color is fixated into the fibers just with the oxidation given by sunlight. Making it a tradition than overpasses most of nowadays “methods” of luxury, taking into account that the mollusk never suffers. Myths around the production, the influence of tourist: both of taste and of demanded price, interpretations of the fashionable concept of trend between the weavers/the tourist/the designers were also topics of debate with the weavers and the Museum itself.
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This back-strap-loom woven textile of a pozahuanco was made in collaboration with weavers of Pinotepa de Don Luis; naturally dyed with Indigofera Suffruticosa blue and artificial dyes for the strong mandarin. Then embroidered with dark Swarovski pearls in Lesage’s Ateliers in Pantin. It depicts a common bird easy to find in Mixtec huipils, this specifically in Ixtlayutla. Stands as an experiment of trans-Atlantic luxury confrontation. A dialog and testimony of my experience with Lesage’s French embroidery techniques with Oaxaca’s textile savoir-faire.
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R E C ON ST RU C T E D STELLA
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RECONSTRUCTED STELLA C o mi ss i o ne d b y t he M use um o f M o d e r n A r t o f N e w York (M o M A ) f o t t he “I t e ms : I s f a s h io n m ode rn ? ” e x h i b i t i o n. 1 / 1 0 / 2 01 7 - 2 8 / 0 1/ 20 18 .
“The underlayer of there Harem Pants is constructed out of silk crepeline fabric, the conservation-grade textiles used by museums for the preservation and presentation of diverse artifacts. To Miguel Mesa Posada, the fabric connotes restoration, linking his garment to Latin American history and the dream of a restored peace, restored identity, or the restitution of stolen lands. Layered on top is thin gauze bedecked with clothing labels turned inside out. Such labels typically provide information about a garment’s material composition, place of fabrication and its care instructions: for Mesa Posada, they symbolize how a garment’s origins can be manipulated, sometimes superficially or without due care for its cultural context.
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Mesa Posada’s project engages the legacy of exoticism and appropriation in seemingly distant cultures and traditions by examining our comprehension of the meaning imbued in our clothing. Imagination is a powerful tool in the designer’s arsenate, it can help us feel closer to foreign geographies and peoples, yet it can also create an image that is not always true to its source, deliberately or otherwise.”
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M I G U E L
M E S A
P O S A D A
PORTAFOLIO 2013
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2017
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