Claudia Alarcón & Silät

About

Claudia Alarcón (b. 1989, Argentina) is an indigenous textile artist from the La Puntana community of Wichí people of northern Salta, Argentina. Alongside her individual practice, she leads the Silät collective, an organisation of one hundred women weavers of different generations from the Alto la Sierra and La Puntana Wichí communities. Wichí society is clan-based and matrilocal. Weaving with hand-spun vegetal fibres from the local chaguar plant has been a communal, female-led activity for centuries, and is fundamental to the visual culture, narrative history and economics of the Wichí people. Silät, the name adopted by the artist collective, means ‘information’ or ‘alert,’ and reflects the role of their textiles to convey messages and a shared cultural sentiment.

This exhibition will be their first institutional solo presentation in Europe and follows their participation in the 60th International Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere in 2024.