Bianca Barbosa Chizzolini

This ethnographic project investigates the role that artisanal objects and ornamentation play in the constitution of gendered daily practices and ways of life in Oaxaca de Juarez (Mexico). Hand-made textile production is at the center of the social life of several rural Mexican communities. In this plural cultural context, servilletas are ordinary and richly adorned pieces produced by women artisans and associated with everyday and festive food. Despite their notorious presence in social life, they are absent from the Mexican textile debate. In order to analyze the social lives of adornments I will conduct participant observation over a period of 18 months. I will participate in servilletas producers’ embroidery classes, make weekly visits to popular markets, and interview women who regularly use adorned objects in their everyday activities. My research seeks to discuss how objects are entangled with the creation of gender relations, and looks at craftsmanship as gendered. By carrying out a research internship at Museo Textil de Oaxaca my research seeks to analyze the criterias applied to form the institution’s textile collection. This project will shed light on the meanings of daily life aestheticization as a human characteristic, and the political role of embellishment in culturally shared life.