A new exhibition in Florida harnesses antique methods of pigmenting and textile production to honor the indigenous peoples of colonial Spanish America.
Painter Sandy Rodriguez’s Currents of Resistance at Sarasota’s Ringling Museum of Art is a “reimagining of colonial archival material,” specifically cartographic documents, Artnews wrote.
To create what she calls a “resistance map,” Rodriguez manufactures pigments from native mineral and botanical specimens, which are transferred onto amate paper produced in accordance with pre-Conquest Aztec techniques.
Once illegal to produce, the knowledge of manufacturing amate — or, as Rodriguez calls it, “outlaw paper” — has persisted: “Indigenous cultures have existed here for over 12,000 years and continue to endure,” the museum’s curator said.