Crafting Gender: Women and Folk Art in Latin America and the Caribbean

Art historians, anthropologists, and sociologists from Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States, the contributors discuss artwork from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Suriname. Many of the essays focus on indigenous artists. They highlight the complex webs of social relations from which folk art emerges. For instance, while several pieces describe the similar creative and technical processes of indigenous pottery-making communities of the Amazon and of mestiza potters in Mexico and Colombia, they also reveal the widely varying functions of the ceramics and meanings of the iconography. Integrating the many social, historical, political, geographical, and economic factors that shape folk art in Latin America and the Caribbean, Crafting Gender sheds much-needed light on a rich body of art and the women who create it