Sheep wool has been one of the most important materials in human history. With it, we have woven and told our story. This material has protected us and created a strong cultural bond over time. However, the arrival of synthetic fibers has drastically reduced its use, production, and demand worldwide, putting at risk ancestral and artisanal techniques related to textile production and sheep farming.

My project is situated in Colombia, my country of origin, which is not exempt from this problem. It is estimated that wool production has decreased by 60% in the last 20 years. Sheep arrived in the territory during the Spanish colonial period, and over time, wool became an essential product for many communities that shaped their identity and traditions around this material. One of these communities is the indigenous Ika Arhuaca, located in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Their textiles are deeply linked to their cosmogony, spirituality, and identity. In addition to preserving weaving techniques, this community maintains ancestral knowledge about wool processing, herding, spinning, and the fabrication of traditional tools. Additionally, the sale of their textile pieces is one of the main sources of income for this community.

Weavers have started buying wool from other regions of the country, which increases the production costs of their textiles. This, combined with the low availability of wool in Colombia, has gradually led to the sporadic use of cheaper synthetic fibers like Orlón, putting the preservation of their textile tradition at risk.

For this project, I used 100% Colombian wool, sheared by a farming family in the Boyacá region. I manually combed the wool and later created a felt that, through multiple iterations, I used as a photographic medium employing the cyanotype technique. On the wool, I used archival photographs recently released by the Banco de la República of Colombia. These images, taken throughout the 20th century, show the strong connection that the Ika Arhuaca community has with textile production and sheep farming, highlighting the traditions that could be at risk.

Finally, I wove all the pieces into a tapestry using wool spun and naturally dyed by Colombian artisans. This piece, with its multiple layers and images, is a living depiction of a place. And in the same way that, for the Arhuacos, the act of weaving is a metaphor for thought, where each stitch reflects a reflection of the mind, this piece allows us to reflect on a territory, materials, ancestry, and tradition.