This spring the Kawsay Ukhunchay Collection received a loan of storytelling tapestries and story cloths from the Historical Costumes and Textiles Collection. HCTC curator Gayle Strege joined the Kawsay Ukhunchay student curators to install these items in Hagerty Hall 255 for our semester-long collaboration and theme on Storytelling Tapestries.
Perhaps the most exciting piece on loan from HCTC is a Peruvian tapestry that depicts the story of Tupac Amaru II, 18th century Inka rebel leader, and the Inkarrí myth which foretells the return of the last Inka ruler. Through intricate weaving and symbolic images, the tapestry tells the story of Tupac Amaru’s violent execution by the Spanish in 1781. Beheaded and quartered in the main plaza of Cuzco, Tupac Amaru is depicted being pulled apart by four horses. (Tupac Amaru I suffered a similar fate). The myth of the Inkarrí, also inscribed in the tapestry, prophesizes that when the Inka’s body rejoins with the head, this will mark an overturning of time-space and the return of the last Inka to restore the world order.
Both historical details and mythic time are inscribed in Andean storytelling tapestries such as these, demonstrating the versatility and depth of this storytelling form in the Andes and throughout the world.
Other storytelling tapestries include an embroidered Salvadorean narrative of protest against the United States on a sugar cane sack during the El Salvadoran Civil War, 1980-1992 donated to HCTC by the Center for Folklore Studies; two Fon King Cloths from Benin and Dahoney, Africa; and a cotton print from Ghana.
For more information on the Historical Costumes and Textiles Collection at OSU visit https://costume.osu.edu. To learn more about the Kawsay Ukhunchay Andean and Amazonian Collection and this spring’s Storytelling theme visit https://u.osu.edu/aaac/ or schedule a class visit with Michelle Wibbelsman (wibbelsman.1@osu.edu).