Museum of Costumes and Textiles of Quebec:
Top Image: Mola Blouse front of turtle in the ocean. Bottom Image: Ancient pattern of two turtles in a layered maze of reverse appliqué.
Molas are the layered reverse appliqué and embroidered blouse fronts and backs made and worn by Kuna women of Panama. In the twenty-first century the textile art of Kuna women is in transition between the esteemed aesthetics of tradition and the pressure to create contemporary topical products for the marketplace. Molas are collected, reused, interpreted, traded and dissected by both scholars and the marketplace. The Kuna value their molas as cultural wealth and intellectual property.
Molas tell their stories through the materials used to make them, the quality of their designs, the popular subject matter selected for production and by the ‘voices’ of the makers. Mediated as ‘income generation’ through cooperatives, individual Kuna entrepreneurs and outsiders, molas are sold to tourists on cruise lines, peddled on the streets of Panama City by ‘middlemen’, and sold by Kuna men and women in designated tourist markets of Panama City.
While commerce drives the cash economy of Mola making, Molas co-exist as an integral part of a women’s identity, inclusion in the community and value as a member of a family ‘at home’ in the Kuna Yala Archipelago. In the midst of this complex dichotomy are exquisite examples of geometric and abstract interpretations of ancient cosmology along side representations of the latest political struggle in Panama or a slice of popular culture and the latest fashion trends.
Textile scholar, artist and filmmaker Kathryn Lipke Vigesaa and folklorist Dr. Skye Morrison made a collaborative field trip to Panama in June of 2009 to document a moment in the time of ‘Molas in Transition’. Vigesaa’s two earlier research trips to Panama with filmmaker John McKay in 2000 and 2003 serve as comparative touchstones to understanding molas as a narrative art form in the twenty-first century. This work was undertaken with the approval of the Kuna Cultural Council and is supported by Concordia University’s Faculty Fund. Dr. Morrison includes Kuna Molas in her ‘Red Thread Ranis’ project a study of indigenous women’s narrative textiles. The Ontario Arts Council’s Chalmers Arts Fellowship supports her project. Max Allen, founder of the Textile Museum of Canada, generously gave his time, expertise and the loan of selected Molas from his collection to help us expand our vision. Kuna artist Oswaldo DeLeón Kantule “Achu” and his wife Angela assisted with translations and details of Kuna culture to enhance our interpretation. “Molas in Transition” is an invitation to experience indigenous women’s textile art as an intercultural exchange of imagery.
