soil&co

Soil & Company unearths the cultural knitting of these lands, seeking its most ancient referents as it quotes the millenary Paracas Weaving in the shape of a protective cape created by Cynthia Malamud. This cape is one that camouflages with the desert, its landscape and its xerophyte vegetation. Deconstructed and reconstructed, it finds the way towards the heart and guts. These pieces show a great deal of freedom, and a certain vulnerability that enables chaos to become beauty, as in the case of wab-sabi. A fabric open to the incorporation of random elements serves the purpose of retrieving myths and symbols of femininity that cannot be reached directly, since little can be found about the cultural narratives of the Paracas. Winding and unwinding the fabric, we can connect with Mama Ocllo –Great Inca Goddess responsible of teaching women how to sew- with the earlier Goddess of the Loom and finally with the Paracas weaving technique, one that binds women to earth, as they resort to a tree for support in the creation process of the fabric. Cynthia Malamud’s interpretation of Soil & Company returns the fabric and the pieces of clothing to the natural world, the plants, the landscape and its mysteries.