To the rhythm of Leonardo Hidalgo a trova is composed
#theidentitybehindthematerial
We talk about the identity in materials with Leonardo, an expert in the search for the symbols that each scrap, each pigment, each fiber keeps. He tells us while working in his Jaguar room that territories and cultures are woven onto them.
Photography: Miguel Peña, Interview: Adela Cardona
The horizontal loom and the threads of different fibers perched on the table could fool you into thinking that Leonardo, a brown bearded, quick speaking man from Bogotá is a textile designer. But Leo above all is a storyteller and a landscape “trovador”.
Landscapes that look through half open gates or even the dark facades of the Parkway. He looks at the details of our daily life and shapes them in between his threads; reusing, recycling and rebuilding materials and memories. He has done it in collaboration with fashion designer Olga Piedrahíta, in her past work with artisans from Charalá and now in the creation of her Trova brand.
Why is reusing material important in your textile work?
The fabric on its own can be seen as a way to assemble, to link conceptually and literally. The idea of tearing and reconfiguring materials changes not only their properties but also their appearance. It also works when you have a garment you don’t want in your closet anymore but don’t want to throw away. You can give it another chance or make a new material out of it for example, taking the fabric cutting it into strips and making it a thread again. This was something that I started doing in Olga Piedrahíta's workshop. With her I understood that knitting is a failed experiment, it implies seeing mistakes as the learning process, for example when I was studying in m y university I would put fire to those fabrics without hesitation and see how they reacted.
And how did that weaving process start? Does anyone in your family knit?
My dad is an engineer and my mom is a psychologist so there wasn’t many weaving there, on the other hand my grandmother did actually give into this practice. She hardly spoke, but dedicated her time to making dresses and changuas. I learned to use a backstrap loom at the Santo Domingo School of Arts and Crafts. And later on a lady in Tabio taught me to assemble the loom. Some time later when I understood the logic, I started looking on YouTube for knotted mat techniques and started experimenting with it.
Logic that you find in places, that later are weaved onto your pieces
Places for me go beyond geography –which can also be seen as a plastic element that draws attention due to its colors, shapes and textures–. This is also built within individuals, in the layers they create. For example, my place in this specific neighborhood, the Parkway, is completely different from what it might be in the other Parkway. But the collective Parkway is just one place. To map these places you have to look and investigate. That's why every time I go for a walk I take pictures of everything I see; not only in my area but in all of the others.
I began to be aware of this way of conceiving places with the Charalá artisans who invited me to show the pieces that we made for my thesis at the Almojábana and Pañolón Festival. There you could see all of those people from Charalá with their cotton ruana and next to them were all those from Paipa with their wool ruana. You saw their territories embodied in the materials. Those encounters make you wonder what the hell is Colombia actually about?
"What the hell is Colombia" to you?
That is a part of what I want to explore with my work and with my brand, Trova. What actually are we, where do we come from? How do we understand each other in that cut of conquest? We are not what existed before, we are a combination of a complex and difficult mix that is hard to understand.
It is also the fact of understanding that Colombia is a country of regions, a country of different worlds fragmented by geography. I’ve come to know a little bit about the Andean region: Santander, Antioquia, the coffee region and the Caribbean. But I would like to travel across the country to observe people, their day to day lives and the artifacts that surround them.
Like those that surrounded the women of Charalá!
Yes! In that place people leave their doors open, it is a very safe town. And there is an openness to privacy and intimacy that is very beautiful. I stumbled upon them because I was looking to do my thesis around one weaving technique. It all began with research and doing empirical ethnography: meaning that I had to be looking and talking to people. I found a lineage in Charalá linked to the Guane who were weavers and in that moment I understood what happened between the colony and the 19th century. During that transition the creole son dressed in European material. But the rest wove with what was available and made cotton canvases that grew on the ground. All these generations shared the same territory and continue to share it with the artisans who are part of Corpolienzo today. They weave and dye with natural products. This implies a notion of cultivating color of what comes from there. It is an exact demonstration of material as an element of identity.
Do you start with color?
Yes, simply because of light. Light is something that I have been looking at a lot since I returned from Japan, light there is different. It changes depending on the region: Kyoto has very traditional spaces, it's like being with gas lights that from time to time appear in the form of flashes. On the other hand, Tokyo is the typical from “Lost in translation”. Each place and each material reflects light in a different way.
What do you think stayed with you from living in Japan?
Something that caught my attention was the fact that many of these ideas could work in Colombia for example, the idea of simulating, of what is discreet, of what is not said. Like Haiku with its lightness and subtlety. I also loved that it is a country of sophisticated trades. Which made me realise that Colombia without its fractures, could also have a system of that level. The closest thing to that you can see is Peru and Mexico.
My stay there lasted two months. I lived in a rural area to the south and worked in a free project. I got the opportunity to work with Japanese paper and the idea of the barrier that is inside and outside of their houses. It looked like a ghost town until the lights came on at night and you could see the silhouettes cooking. They can sometimes be secluded, but at the same time the surfaces of their houses are opaque and see through.
What I liked most about Japan is that it has a syncretism of times, the present, past and future meet in that place. They either they go at full speed or very slow, and around trades the idea of time is key. Here in Colombia we have to reflect on that since here it also happens when you see pre-modern things like for example people carrying things on the streets with carriages or the lady with the backpack who has a hard time looking for the market.
Times and levels that intersect in your brand, can you tell us about Trova?
The conceptual axis is memory, identity and resistance. The memory part is inspired by the house my mother lived in. In my great-grandfather, who told them stories about Magdalena, animals and nature all the time. He spoke to them about looking inside and not outside. Towards that intimate space of home that I had to imagine since I never got to see it; my grandmother sold the house and dragged it from Tolima all the way here changing their dynamics.
My mother was also a fan of Mercedes Sosa, and a very big influence to build this was the movement of the new Latin American songbook: the idea of Trova as the song of the trovador who travels the country and expresses what he sees from his point of view and the gaze of others, this dialogue is very important to me.
A dialogue that also happens between the creative and the mathematical. For example, I always start by asking myself what kind of knitting diagram should I make? I plan ABC of the warp. Plan 1 and plan 2, which goes through frames, and 4, 3, 2 and 1, as an algorithm. And that already tells you what the structure of the fabric is going to be. I assemble a 4 meter warp to do different tests since I left school with an engineering state of mind. Not forgetting it was also my turn to have a creative mind, that swings between rational and emotional. I had to disconnect and switch from one language to another. To begin learning how to solve the problems for example, how do I make that curve? What material allows me to create that tension?
What is Trova's color palette?
It includes warm and cold tones, looking to reflect the experience you have while traveling through Colombia, you go up, you go down and that generates different cultural and sensory dynamics. I felt it when I was visiting my girlfriend in Armenia. It is an overwhelming amount of smells and the leaves are gigantic, green and shiny.
And what’s next? Where is this headed?
I am one of those people who spends a lot of time thinking about the future. I want to make my textile workshop a reality. I need a team tp ver able to produce textiles without leaving aside the fact that we are also “travadores”. For that I need anthropologists, designers and people who travel to communities and collect stories. I need economists so that synergies can be made with the people doing these things. I’m not going to steal their materials, techniques and stories I am a firm believer that there has to be reciprocity that comes in hand with complexity.
The first thing I'm going to do is get to know the country and with that the materials of each place. From there I plan to create materials from a contemporary vision with the involvement of my vision and theirs. 100% co-creation is not the idea, because there is creative direction. A look from a workshop that can bring places to creators: the architect, the industrial designer, the artists and the fashion designers.