Unravelling Cosmovisions
Weaving Rituals,
Thursday 22 May, 16:00
Regent Street Cinema
Full duration: 65min
This programme showcases three artists’ films exploring Indigenous and pre-Hispanic rituals and practices in Latin America that reveal a deep connection to their territories and cosmologies. The films offer a glimpse into the role of textiles as performance tools and means for handicraft practices that fall radically apart from Western capitalist notions of labour. All three works explore the resonance between bodies, territories, and textiles, with a profound reverence for ancient knowledge systems that consider the natural world not as resource but as relation. From the backstrap looms of Mesoamerica to the waterways of Mapuche lands to the threatened shores of Chile, these films document living traditions of material engagement that reframe textile’s relationship with nature. Rather than extraction and consumption, we witness cycles of creation where human hands work in dialogue with fibres and flowing waters. Each filmmaker captures the intimate choreography between maker and material – a dance of reciprocity honouring the ecological origins of textile and craft. In a time when fashion seeks sustainability, these Indigenous practices offer not merely technical solutions but profound cosmological reorientations that challenge us to reimagine our entanglement with the living world as one of kinship rather than conquest.
Introduction by Mariana Cunha.
This programme is guest-curated by Mariana Cunha (CREAM, University of Westminster). With special thanks to May Adadol Ingawanij and Christel Tsilibaris.
Tray Tray Ko
Chile, 2022. Dir. Seba Calfuqueo, 6min, Mapuzungun and Spanish with English subtitles Meaning ‘big waterfall’, Tray Tray Ko draws on the centrality of the trayenko (waterfall) in Mapuche culture and mythology. Water bodies and their flows carry a sacred significance in Mapuche cosmovision, as they are linked to the vitality of the lawen, which are medicinal herbs that grow by water. In Calfuqueo's performance, we follow her body moving through a forest, pulling a long, deep-blue fabric towards a river, culminating in a waterfall. Calfuqueo's body merges with its waters in an arduous effort to hold the long fabric towards the cascading waterfall. This ceremonial journey illuminates the intimate connection and reciprocity between Indigenous bodies and ancestral territories. As Calfuqueo moves through the landscape, her form becomes a conduit for ancient knowledge and resistance. The vivid blue fabric traces her path like a living current, evoking too the Shumpall, a water deity that escapes gender binary definitions. Through this ritual, Tray Tray Ko offers a meditation on water as a vital element for life and physical sustenance while also celebrating the potential of water to escape gender binary categorisation.
La Libertad
Colombia, 2017. Dir. Laura Huertas Millán, 30min, Spanish with English subtitles Central to La Libertad is the backstrap loom and the pre-Columbian practice of weaving preserved by generations of Indigenous women in Mesoamerica. Huertas Millán's experimental ethnography follows a family of tejedoras (weavers), offering a glimpse into the labouring gestures of these matriarchs. Formally, the film weaves together fragments of their daily lives and testimonies that touch on labour, emancipation, patriarchy, and freedom. Huertas Millán astutely articulates these gestures and conversations within larger discourses on value and commodification. Beyond documentation, La Libertad presents a tactile yet unintrusive look at the ecological and intimate microcosmos built around textiles. The camera captures the rhythmic precision of their movements as they braid motifs onto fabric – animals, objects, and geometrical forms that carry ancient significance. Through patient observation, the film reveals how these woven patterns serve as embodied resistance, preserving a cultural practice that has survived centuries of systematic erasure while reflecting on autonomy and collective memory.
Kon Kon Pi
Chile, 2010. Dir. Cecilia Vicuña, 13min, Spanish with English subtitles In this visual poem, Cecilia Vicuña returns to Con Con on the central Chilean coast, where she developed the concept of ‘precarious sculptures’ in the 1960s. Once a sacred landscape, this region now faces devastation from extractive industries, real estate speculation, and unchecked tourism. Deeply centred in the natural world, Kon Kon Pi serves as a reverent tribute to the land and sea – the sacred site of the god Kon at the mouth of the Aconcagua River. The film opens with Vicuña dragging a red thread across the shore, creating ephemeral lines in the sand that are eventually reclaimed by the advancing tide. Raw fibres are gathered, becoming temporary installations – meditations on materiality and dissolution. Through her tactile engagement with natural elements, Vicuña’s ecological vision enacts ancient textile traditions and processes of birth, death, and transformation that reflect water cycles.
Tray Tray Ko
Chile, 2022. Dir. Seba Calfuqueo, 6min, Mapuzungun and Spanish with English subtitles 
Meaning ‘big waterfall’, Tray Tray Ko draws on the centrality of the trayenko (waterfall) in Mapuche culture and mythology. Water bodies and their flows carry a sacred significance in Mapuche cosmovision, as they are linked to the vitality of the lawen, which are medicinal herbs that grow by water. In Calfuqueo's performance, we follow her body moving through a forest, pulling a long, deep-blue fabric towards a river, culminating in a waterfall. Calfuqueo's body merges with its waters in an arduous effort to hold the long fabric towards the cascading waterfall. This ceremonial journey illuminates the intimate connection and reciprocity between Indigenous bodies and ancestral territories. As Calfuqueo moves through the landscape, her form becomes a conduit for ancient knowledge and resistance. The vivid blue fabric traces her path like a living current, evoking too the Shumpall, a water deity that escapes gender binary definitions. Through this ritual, Tray Tray Ko offers a meditation on water as a vital element for life and physical sustenance while also celebrating the potential of water to escape gender binary categorisation.
La Libertad
Colombia, 2017. Dir. Laura Huertas Millán, 30min, Spanish with English subtitles Central to La Libertad is the backstrap loom and the pre-Columbian practice of weaving preserved by generations of Indigenous women in Mesoamerica. Huertas Millán's experimental ethnography follows a family of tejedoras (weavers), offering a glimpse into the labouring gestures of these matriarchs. Formally, the film weaves together fragments of their daily lives and testimonies that touch on labour, emancipation, patriarchy, and freedom. Huertas Millán astutely articulates these gestures and conversations within larger discourses on value and commodification. Beyond documentation, La Libertad presents a tactile yet unintrusive look at the ecological and intimate microcosmos built around textiles. The camera captures the rhythmic precision of their movements as they braid motifs onto fabric – animals, objects, and geometrical forms that carry ancient significance. Through patient observation, the film reveals how these woven patterns serve as embodied resistance, preserving a cultural practice that has survived centuries of systematic erasure while reflecting on autonomy and collective memory.
Kon Kon Pi
Chile, 2010. Dir. Cecilia Vicuña, 13min, Spanish with English subtitles In this visual poem, Cecilia Vicuña returns to Con Con on the central Chilean coast, where she developed the concept of ‘precarious sculptures’ in the 1960s. Once a sacred landscape, this region now faces devastation from extractive industries, real estate speculation, and unchecked tourism. Deeply centred in the natural world, Kon Kon Pi serves as a reverent tribute to the land and sea – the sacred site of the god Kon at the mouth of the Aconcagua River. The film opens with Vicuña dragging a red thread across the shore, creating ephemeral lines in the sand that are eventually reclaimed by the advancing tide. Raw fibres are gathered, becoming temporary installations – meditations on materiality and dissolution. Through her tactile engagement with natural elements, Vicuña’s ecological vision enacts ancient textile traditions and processes of birth, death, and transformation that reflect water cycles.