Claudia Alarcón & Silät: Tayhin

About

'The geometric shapes we make in the fabric have meanings; each one is a message. Some shapes reference birds, footprints, cat's eyes, our landscape. In the images we recall our ancestors and see that they are still part of us.' – Claudia Alarcón

Claudia Alarcón is an indigenous textile artist from the La Puntana community of Wichí people of northern Salta, Argentina. Alongside her own artistic practice, she leads the Silät collective, an organisation of over one hundred women weavers of different generations from the Alto la Sierra and La Puntana Wichí communities. Tayhin is the collective's first institutional solo presentation and brings together a series of recently made weavings. Several of these are suspended across freestanding structures, referring to the trees and wooden posts that are used by the artists to hang and stretch each piece once complete.

Formed in 2023 and coordinated by Alarcón and curator, Andrei Fernández, the Silät collective emerged from the Thañí/Viene del monte [Comes from the Bush] organisation, a public project aimed at reviving ancestral textile traditions in Salta. Silät, meaning 'information' or 'alert', uses weaving as a non-verbal form of communication, making visible a centuries-old practice passed down through generations.

Weaving in Wichí communities is a female-led, communal and ancestral practice that underpins their visual culture, storytelling and economic life. For centuries, thread from the local chaguar plant has been hand-spun to create different objects, such as bags and fishing nets, and since 2015, with Fernández's support, large-scale works that depict geometric forms, each with their own symbol or message. The chaguar plant from which these works are made is deeply embedded in the lives of Wichí women. Its leaves are carefully harvested, peeled, crushed, soaked and spun into thread, which is then dyed using natural pigments from roots, bark, leaves and seeds, or with artificial dyes for brighter tones. Each weaving emerges through a collective choreography, with some of the largest works involving up to seven women at a time.

Alarcón and Silät's work reflects a wider commitment to creative autonomy and intergenerational knowledge-sharing. It provides women across generations and geographies the opportunity to transmit a contemporary indigenous culture to an international art context, while resisting ethnographic framing. The exhibition's title, Tayhin, is the Wichí term for weaving, an intransitive verb that also means building, reconstructing and healing. It evokes the collective spirit and imaginative scope of Silät's practice.

As Alarcón has said of the group's international recognition: 'The important thing is that everyone now knows that we are here, part of this land, alive and resisting. We are always in solidarity, seeking respect and value for us and our work, for who we are and what we want to be, in honour of our ancestors. We will continue fighting!'

Exhibition supported by Cecilia Brunson Projects.

Image: Claudia Alarcón & Silät: Tayhin, 2025, Installation View, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-On-Sea. Photography: Rob Harris