Simbolismo de un papel maché mexicano

Posibles antecedentes prehispánicos de la cartonería mexicana y su relevancia en las prácticas artísticas contemporáneas

Abstract

This article questions the configuration of cardboard in Mexico as a simple contribution by the conquest, but it is possible to draw a historical line with antecedents in pre-Columbian cultures that provide aspects at a technical and symbolic level that joined with foreign techniques. This would be of utmost relevance for artisans, scholars and artists, because it carries a vernacular symbolism that is revealing for contemporary artistic practices. Our ancestors took paper to aesthetic limits hardly suspected by Western culture, since it was served as an autonomous material, expressing its own nature, following its own course and manifesting its own symbolism. This revision is done not so much from the point of view of the historian or the anthropologist but as an artist. Beyond demonstrating a possible link between pre-Hispanic paper arts with contemporary cartonería, we propose to invite us to generate our own link not as a mere record of a foreign past, but quite the contrary, making the past a present act by translating it as a direct experience in artistic practice.