Films

In the Tsotsil and Tseltal communities in Chiapas, Mexico, weaving and embroidering has traditionally been women’s work, practised in the home and made to be used by the family. As global demand grows for artisanal textile products, women are increasingly venturing outside their homes to sell their products, bringing them in contact with outside commercial agents, providing them with their own income, and leading to a series of transformations in their work practices, relations, and identities. An understanding of the significance of these changes can only be grasped through context: the context of the homes where women work, the frame of their daily activities, in connection to their aspirations for their children, in relation to the work of their husbands and the stipulations of their clients. The film highlights these diverse contexts and relationships as it documents the work of embroiderers from the Tseltal communities of Aguacatenango and El Puerto. The embroiderers, who form part of the collective Malacate Taller Experimental Textil, speak about their work and their lives as they finish a large order from a US-based client.