The Word That Gives Life: A Collaboration in Four Voices

Born out of a deep spiritual dialogue between two artists, Juliana Góngora Rojas and Matías Quintero Sepúlveda, and two leaders of the Ko’revaju Indigenous community of the Northern Amazon, Juven and Yinela Piranga Valencia, these works honor the four collaborators’ shared vision of collectivity, creation, and care.

Góngora and Quintero first connected with the Ko’revaju community in the early months of 2020 as part of a program through the Colombian government organization Artesanias de Colombia that provided artists who were interested in exploring the intimate relationship between art and craft an opportunity to connect with skilled craftspeople. Interested in learning more about cumare—a fiber that comes from a plant indigenous to the Amazon and holds sacred properties for the Ko’revaju—they began a conversation with Juven and Yinela Piranga that would inform their artistic and spiritual lives for the coming years.

Cumare, Góngora had heard, could help heal a person’s stutter. Through lengthy discussions, the Indigenous leaders explained that, in their community, a stutter is considered a collective disease. While it might manifest in one individual, it reflects the entire community’s lack of certainty and inability to speak the truth. “During the first conversation,” Góngora has said, “I recognized that I, too, have felt stuttered in many ways, being an artist, a woman, a student. This new definition that they shared allowed me to understand myself as part of that collective illness.”

These initial exchanges with Ko’revaju leaders birthed some of the first works produced in collaboration with Juven and Yinela Piranga. Lengüitas sagradas (Sacred Little Tongues) is an installation of one hundred small tongue-shaped objects woven in cumare, each holding a number of seeds. Designed as “tongue coverings,” the works are intended to relieve those who speak with uncertainty. “The word has to be certain because the word can create,” says Juven Piranga. “The word is a key; the word opens doors.”

Indeed, the creative capabilities of language has been a central theme of the collaborators’ ongoing dialogues. Through engagement with organic materials, they reinforce their commitment to honoring the intrinsic and explicit union between word, action, and intention. “Just like clay, the word has elasticity, flexibility, and movement,” Góngora affirms. “To consider and remember these qualities can soften the word; it can sweeten it.”

The artwork La palabra dulce consists of several hanging pieces woven in cumare with a technique called ojito de piña, or pineapple eye, and dyed with natural pigments. The pineapple is considered sacred in many Indigenous communities of the Amazon because it represents the head and the thought. Engaging with this weaving technique, Yinela Piranga explains, is not just a mechanical action of the body but an extension of our thoughts that connects us with the sacred and the divine. “When one weaves the fiber, one also weaves the universe,” she says.

In the exhibition, these objects orbit like planets around two site-specific installations that together represent a complete universe—heavens and earth. Commissioned for the exhibition, and to be created directly in our galleries, the textile Manto celeste by Matías Quintero will be fashioned using an Indigenous ceremonial cloth that the artist will tint with a sand-based pigmentation in a blue hue—a color that has historically represented motherhood, water, and the cosmic sky. On the other hand, Góngora, who often engages with soil, will create a burnished floor installation, Piso de tierra, rooting the exhibition in Chicago by using local soil and clay as a way to honor everything that came before and that which is required to sustain life: the earth and the seed.

The “cosmic weaving” that these works represent reflects the collaborators’ experiences of the innate ties between humanity and our environment. Through the exhibition, they extend an invitation to recognize ourselves as guardians and stewards of everything that surrounds us.

The collaborators and members of the Ko’revaju community have crafted a poetic text in tandem with the exhibition—a word of encouragement for all of us—offered in Ko’revaju and Spanish with English translation, stressing the human task of preserving and caring for our common mother, Mother Earth. They encourage all who attend to read it.

—Anna Burckhardt Pérez, Neville Bryan Assistant Curator, Architecture and Design

The collaborators’ words follow, first in Ko’revaju, then in Spanish, and, finally, in English.

Chareparo cutu jo’kasi chu’opote cuasajuni, vajuchu’opo chuuta’a pa’iu nukakuna, ucua pa’iche re’ojachere ñookuna jovojaime.  

Iumucujña aina chu’ore cuasaju ucuanukore re’ojarekocho pauchini pojoju, cho’osomachu’opo pa’iuna, ku’e pai ja’me pa’ime chii’iju cuasame.  

Cheja peore pa’iche cho’osi’e thuoñe, na’a jmara’meru rocheja paivana’ma mai. 

Cheja cho’orumu vuasi’epi pa’iche teana peorepare ñomamu mai paiva’na ñakovaa, pekeru ñoku saimu, ja’ajekuna mama aineva’na jujñarua ja’a rekochopi thuoju ro’keju saime, ja’aja’ñe aperumupi cuasajokasi’e ma’a vataku saimu paiu rekochona thuo rokeku sasachini. Ja’a mai paiva’na pa’icheji tuoju saiche paimu ucuanukore. Mama joiva’na mai rekocho tuo rojaime, ja’ajekuna mai ñakovaa ñama’ñere ñooto, cuama’ñe tuoju saime chiimu ja’a.  

Mai thuoñe ja’a oko veama’ñe chiacha meañeja’ñe pa’icheme. Ja’ajekuna repa vajuchu’opo maire vata kuaku samu ie pa’iche. 

Thuoju mai ruiñe pe’keru pa’iju ucuarepa pa’ichete che’cheche’me

Thuoju saiju taaju kuirame mai pa’iche’te

Vaju pa’iche ja’a kuirame mai, ja’ame repa ucuarepa.

Reunidos en la palabra creadora, palabra que da vida, nos encontramos para recordar el principio. 

Hoy gozamos de palabra sanadora y compartimos en el espíritu, porque la palabra milenaria de los ancianos nos dice con certeza que no estamos solos. 

Somos la parte más pequeña de un tejido cósmico. 

Desde el origen, el tejido de la creación no se ha manifestado en su totalidad, siempre hay algo nuevo por descubrir para que el tejido fluya entre las manos de las generaciones por venir y así, lo que ha sido proyectado desde la creación se abre camino a lo largo del universo y busca el curso hacía el ser humano, quien es la extensión de la tierra, para conectar con lo invisible y hacer posible su legado. En nosotros está la posibilidad de continuar el tejido de la humanidad. Con cada nueva vida, en cada encuentro el tejido se expande, todos tejemos. 

Tejiendo honramos el principio del agua y la palabra natural que organiza y orienta.

Tejiendo aprendemos a vivir con prudencia y responsabilidad. 

Tejiendo sembramos y cuidamos la vida.

Somos cuidadores de vida, eso es lo fundamental.

Gathered by the word of creation, the word that gives life, we come together to remember the beginning.

Today, we rejoice in the word that heals. We share from within our spirit, for the ancient word of the elders tells us with certainty that we are not alone.

We are the smallest fragment of a cosmic weaving. Since the beginning, the weaving of creation has not manifested in its entirety; there is always something new to discover so that the fabric may flow through the hands of the generations to come. And thus, what was projected from creation paves its way across the universe, seeking its course toward humanity, which is the extension of the earth, to connect with the invisible and make its legacy possible. In us lies the possibility to continue humanity’s weaving. With each new life, in every encounter, the fabric expands; we are all weavers.

Through weaving, we honor the origin of water and the natural word that organizes and guides us.

Through weaving, we learn to live prudently and responsibly.

Through weaving, we sow and care for life.

En el principio / In the beginning: Juliana Góngora Rojas, Matías Quintero Sepúlveda, Juven Piranga Valencia, and Yinela Piranga Valencia opens March 29 in Gallery 283.

Topics

• Exhibitions
• From the Curator