Weaving at the Dawn of Dreams

For the 1988 conference ‘Legends for a New Earth’, Ursula K. Le Guin placed herself at the centre of the world, as if she were the ‘Spider Grandmother’ creating it from within, just as a spider weaves its web. These lines were inspired by the Hopi people’s creation myth. In this myth, the Earth Goddess, embodied by a spider woman, shapes beings from clay. However, when she realised that they were unable to breathe or move, she called upon the Sun God, Tawa. Together, they spread a white, skilfully woven blanket as soft as a cloud over the many figures. They then cast a powerful spell over the blanket, and the figures stirred, inhaled air, and came to life. Beneath that woven blanket, humanity slept, ready to be reborn on a new earth. The spider woman who weaves a world, or the spider grandmother who protects humans beneath her blanket, are figures found in various cosmogonies that nourish our tales of the world’s beginnings by spinning stories about the Earth. Ursula K. Le Guin’s literature is full of these spiders that embody creation, craftsmanship, writing and stories woven through intertwining threads. Thus, the spider is conceived as an artist.

Spinning the fleece of the sun and the misty flake,
weaving a glance and a gesture,
shaping the clay of emotion:
doing household chores. Making patterns.
Following patterns.
Lying there at dreamtime
following patterns (2017, 396).

 Wrapped in a small blanket, Sarah Viguer Cebriá travelled in an R5 on the night that gave way to day. In her half-asleep state, the girl dreamed of finding the land she longed for. It was a place created from stories, legends, folklore and family memories, where she swung ‘on a spider’s thread towards the unknown’ (2017, p. 308). It was a land that she herself would later use as inspiration for her own fiction.

    ‘Retales Altares Telares’, the Franco-Spanish artist’s first exhibition at the Vangar Gallery, features a series of works created specifically to explore her Valencian roots. For a long time, Sarah has navigated periods of geographical crisis, wondering how she could embody a Valencian identity when she has spent most of her life abroad. In other words, from a diasporic perspective. As Stuart Hall asserted, it is not so much a matter of constructing an identity as it is of imagining it. Following Hall’s lead, we might also ask how to cultivate an imagination of Valencian identity in a globalised era. Sarah Viguer Cebriá skilfully weaves the fabric on her loom to create a ghostly image imbued with memories recounted by her Valencian relatives, old photographs, pieces of fabric from traditional Valencian dresses obtained from the Compañía de la Seda, ceramic shoes made in Manises, her grandmother’s jewellery boxes and combs from the classical Levantine goldsmith tradition. Together, all these pieces form an autobiographical narrative of the artist. Like the medieval altarpieces that housed Christian hagiography, three lavishly draped pieces open to reveal the story. In the centre, a significant chapter in the family’s history is recounted. La Alquería del Desahucio alludes to Spanish developmentalism during the Franco era and the expropriation of so many families’ homes over the past decades. La Niña de Mis Ojos appears to be a fictional self-portrait of the artist as a child, like a little doll opening her eyes to life in Valencia, the Fallas festival and traditions. La Valenciana refers to the Montanejos hotel, which is renowned for its thermal waters with healing properties. Women of all ages were sent there by their doctors to find peace of mind amid their psychological struggles.

Weaving, dreaming and storytelling have many similarities, but they all converge in a vivid imagination. Weaving is dreaming; it is creating patterns from images seen in dreams. So, what technologies of memory are at play when sleep prevails? Weaving is caring. On her loom, she creates images that blur the line between night and day, and between childhood and adulthood (see “Loom Doll for Dawn” and “Loom Doll for Dusk”). She weaves networks with other realities, creating what Benedict Anderson (1993, p. 23) defined as ‘imagined communities’: cultural and political artefacts designed to create shared mental images within a community. Here, the attachment to a system of sentimental roots extends beyond the ‘testimonial objects’ Marianne Hirsch advocated for postmemory. Metal curtains that, in a fleeting and evanescent way, compose the image of the wool flower or the R5. They are portals to another emotional dimension. Carob pods, castanets and flower petals. These all form ex-votos, or ‘secular relics’, which, as Walter Benjamin noted, strengthen our sense of belonging in a desacralised world. In this case, they unite Valencia, the Holy Chalice and the chains of the Port of Marseille (the Spoon Chain of the Holy Chalice). They activate a storytelling force, transforming objects into new patterns for memory. Thus, a fantastical realm of mythological beings opens a path towards a personal faith: protective bats that transform into virgins adorned with crystals, glass beads, and rosary beads (The Virgin of the Bat #1, #2, #3, #4, and #5). Amid family memories in which women take centre stage as guardians of tradition and folk wisdom, the artist presents us with new folk rituals born of imagination, hybridisation, and hope. The mysterious ghosts in the orchard and fantastical animals once again roam the earthen ridges. Who will venture out among the orange trees to hunt these creatures of the imagination? They are woven gambusinos (Gambusino Levante), made with threads that transcend the overseas techniques the artist learnt in another country and on another continent. They are woven from stories of a different past and an Eastern present that create new patterns, like those of a spider, with an eye towards the future.

Johanna Caplliure
Curator, art critic and Vice-Dean of Culture, Equality and Diversity at the Faculty of Fine Arts.

Universidad Politécnica de Valencia.

References:

Anderson, B. (1993). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Fondo de Cultura Económica.

Hall, S. (2003). Thinking About the Diaspora: At Home, From Abroad. In C. Jáuregui (Ed.), Heterotopias: Narratives of Latin American Identity and Otherness (pp. 477–500). Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana.

Hirsch, M. (2021). The Postmemory Generation: Writing and Visual Culture in the Wake of the Holocaust’. Editorial Carpe Noctem.

Le Guin, U. K. (1988). ‘Legends for a New Land’: Guest of Honour Speech at the 19th Annual Mythopoeic Conference. Mythlore: A Journal of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams and Mythopoeic Literature, 15(2), Article 1.

Le Guin, U. K. (2017). To Tell Is to Listen: On Writing, Reading, and Imagination. Círculo de Tiza.