CLAUDIA OPIMÍ VACA
Claudia Opimí Vaca( b. 1962, Tajibo community of the Amazon, Bolivia) is an artist who takes a contemporary approach to the textile tradition. She is originally from Los Tajibos, a community of Chiquitano immigrants just seventy-five years old.
Her first work was a hand-spun cotton hammock. This marked the start of her association with Artecampo( Fieldart); she received support from the Centro de Investigación, Diseño Artesanal y Comercialización Cooperativa( CIDAC; Center for Research, Artisanal Design, and Cooperative Marketing). Opimí Vaca did not stop at developing creative ideas of her own, but shared her knowledge with more than two hundred and fifty women from ten communities. She thus strengthened the bonds of a collaborative network while preserving the techniques of Chiquitano textile art.
She has adopted the mola technique, in which small pieces of fabric are layered and sewn together with fine stitching. Her creative process began with drawing classes, allowing her to develop iconographic compositions which draw on the flora and fauna of her territory. Her creations feature representations of toborochi trees, patujú flowers, jaguars, birds, and lowland flora, transforming the woven fabric into a platform for new artistic narratives.
But Opimí Vaca’ s art does not only keep tradition alive— it reinvents and expands it into new spaces, integrating it into the contemporary art of the community and the Amazon region at large. Her work connects the mola technique from the region between Colombia and Panama with the lowlands of Bolivia and especially Santa Cruz. The technique proposes new ways of performing and resignifying traditional textile practices.( ELVIRA ESPEJO AYCA)
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