La Wayaka Current

Quimaria
During the La Wayaka residency, I have brought the feminine energy, which I often work with onto a new medium. While I mostly work with water-based oils, I have gone back a few years in my own life, working in fashion design before visual art, but also generations back, when working especially with yarns and embroidery was found only among women. For the same reason, the medium has not achieved the same status in the art world, which, as a feminist artist, I want to challenge.
This piece is created exclusively with a normal needle and crochet hook from llama yarns from Chile. The motif itself contains my encounter with the wild Atacama desert, which first showed me its layered horizons, then the mighty mountains and volcanoes. I was particularly fascinated by the different levels of the horizon as well as their feminine lines, which is the reason I embrace it in the piece. The story of Quimal and the two princes struck me, because it took me back to my native town, where we have a similar tale of a woman who had to choose between two men. With humility towards the legends and a 2023-irony, I can't help but use both stories as fuel for why the meeting between the masculine and the feminine must still have such tragic fates. Perhaps most of all, I want to incorporate Quimal and her prince as a reminder of inner balance and authenticity, especially in the paradigm shift we now find ourselves in, where the patriarchs around the world are slowly being tilted.
I have played with the internal as well as external process in the masculine-feminine balances with different textures and weights in the yarns with a desire to show how beautiful even the most messy, introspective journey can be, seen with a little perspective.
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The story of Quimal (Chile)
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Every afternoon the young Prince Licancabur went out to tour the Gran Salar, at the other end of which, beyond the uninhabited mountain range that today we know how Domeyko, they saw the Sun dead in the sea all the afternoon. Among the scions of the ancient mountains there was the beautiful Quimal.
After numerous sunsets together, Quimal and Licancabur fell deeply in love. Everything was going well, until another of the princes, Lascar, met the beautiful Quimal. The coveted princess confesses that her heart belongs to Licancabut. Lascar, enraged by Quimal's confession, says: If I can't have you, no one else will! He was determined to render accounts with Licancabur.
The great mountains decided to intervene and punished them: You, princess, for causing discord between these two brothers are exiled to the uninhabited mountain range of Domeyko. Now you, Lascar, will be condemned to be always steaming with anger and snarling with bewilderment too. And for you too, young Licancabur, Quimal will be always in front of you without ever being able to meet.
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The story of Maria (Denmark)
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Legend has it that at the spring two deadly knights, Hem and Sem, fought a duel over a beautiful virgin Mary. However, fate wanted both knights to perish. In grief over this, the maiden drowned herself in the fjord. Her rich property went to the monastery, and the place where she found her final resting place was named Maria’s Ager after her. The spring has naturally sprung in the place where she shed her brave tears over the suitors.




