For 4 years, the teacher and artisan, Catherine Tascón, launched her venture called Maub on the market. ‘Ancestral memories and knowledge’. Although the young woman has a variety of techniques to weave the pieces she sells, she currently focuses on creating designs inspired by the Quimbaya treasure.
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“In the market there are Arhuaco, Kogui, Wayuu backpacks – which are the best known – but it is very important that in Quindío we focus on crafts that tell us our own history and about it.” The Quimbaya who inhabited this territory are part of it,” the woman said.
Their designs are inspired by the curassow bird, one of the species that is most frequently represented in pieces of goldsmithing and ceramics made by the Quimbaya when they inhabited a part of the area where Quindío is today. Among the objects they made also appear the warrior, the mask, the scepter, the poporo, among others.
Catherine Tascón shows her backpack with the design of a curassow, a bird that is represented in the Quimbaya collection.
Photo:Laura Sepulveda
“The technique is crochet, but the plus is the design that I give it. Designs inspired by the objects they made,” said Tascón.
The woman has a degree in Spanish and Literature and a candidate for a master’s degree in Education from the University of Quindío and in his continued search for information about the communities that inhabited the territory he came across a book written in 1929 by Ernesto Restrepo Tirado about the Quimbaya treasure. From there he was inspired to make the designs that appear on his backpacks.
“I observe and get an idea of the object, I make the image geometrically in a grid through superpositions, just as I was taught in a course I took.”
In addition to her crafts, the woman said that she transmits this ancestral knowledge through classes. She recently participated in the parent school of a university in Armenia and taught this type of weaving inspired by the Quimbaya.
The teacher hopes that if the repatriation of the Quimbaya treasure From the museum where he remains in Madrid, in the near future he will be able to observe the pieces live and thus continue to be inspired for his designs.
“It is necessary that the treasure return to our territory and be in the Quimbaya museum in Armenia where we can all see it and take ownership of our history.”
Tascón’s crafts appear on the social networks of his venture @artesaniasmaub.
LAURA SEPÚLVEDA
For the time
ARMENIA
