Fátima Rodrigo

Using embroidery, appliqué, beadwork, and jewels, Fátima Rodrigo adorns her textile works with Andean symbols of celebration and resistance, in an attempt to reclaim a culture which has been routinely extracted and appropriated for commercial purposes, particularly by the fashion industry.

Her Contradanza series refers to a traditional dance that, at its origin, mocked the courtly dances of Spanish colonisers. In Peru, the dance came to be associated with the way local servants perceived their Spanish masters, resulting in a parodic representation of the way they acted during their celebrations and how they imposed them on Peruvian territory. While the aesthetics and traditional dress of indigenous cultures are stripped of their meaning and commercialised in, for example, fashion photography, Rodrigo seeks to reclaim their essence, and consider how these have transformed through exchanges between American, Hispanic and African cultures, in her richly layered compositions.

A further work from the ‘Contradanza’ series was featured in the Liverpool Biennial in 2023.