Kira Dominguez Hultgren USA, b. 1980

Weaving, holding jars and baskets, caring for her daughter, these became the visuals that the Mexican modernist artists around Jiménez created – and to an unknown extent, she curated. Historian Marta Turok argues in her essay, “Luz Jiménez en el arte popular,” that while these ideals reference paintings such as Édouard Pingret’s Habitantes de Coyoacán (1850s?), I believe they also put into place a visual vocabulary that the Chicanx movement in the U.S. later draws from.

What’s interesting to me is the way that fabric is positioned in the documentation of Luz Jiménez in both Turok’s essay and the larger exhibition catalog, “Luz Jiménez, símbolo de un pueblo milenario 1897-1965.” Rugs, blankets, ponchos, serapes, rebozos, skirts, blouses are seen in the background of many photographs in the catalog, including the ones woven into my weaving, “Chasing Tales.” Notice the mitla pattern/symbol in the woven photograph of Jiménez sitting next to anthropologist and translator Fernando Horcasitas (upper left corner of “Chasing Tales”).