Embroiderers from Jequitinhonha have works on display in BH – 01/25/2023 – Brazil

Maria do Carmo Guimarães, Carmen, 40, learned to embroider from a young age with an aunt as a teenager, in the rural area of ​​Jenipapo de Minas, northwest of Minas Gerais. In the Quilombola community of Curtume, the farmer was not instantly enchanted with the task of transforming spun threads into decorative designs for towels, tablecloths and dishcloths.

But it was only in 2015 that Carmen got back in touch with handicrafts through initiatives by the NGO Tingui, which works to strengthen rural and quilombola communities by valuing local knowledge and culture. The work of the embroiderers became a work of art, part of an exhibition in Belo Horizonte.

Stories like Carmen’s are repeated in the lives of the women of the Jequitinhonha Valley who form the artisan collectives Bordadeiras do Curtume and Mulheres da Ponte.

Using elements that are part of everyday life in the hinterland of Minas Gerais, the embroiderers produce pieces that use the nature, culture and identity that surround them as inspiration.

“Each embroidery is a story that happens”, says Carmen. “I feel happy and grateful to be able to show a scene like that of a woman picking cotton, harvesting it with such care.”

Embroidery of the local flora, full of native herbs used as an antidote for pain “of the body and soul”, landscapes of the cerrado and the Atlantic forest, everyday scenes that preserve the community’s way of life, such as playing verse, taking care of animals and batucar are part of the first individual exhibition of the Women of Jequitinhonha, “Embroidery of Heaven and Earth”.

The works are open to visitors until March 5 at the BDMG Cultural Art Gallery (Circuito Liberdade), at Rua Bernardo Guimarães, 1600, Lourdes.

By uniting routine with ancestry, the works transform the craft passed down from generation to generation into a narrative tool. Women are also able to bring income to the region by selling their produce.

“If someone passes by selling something, you have money to buy it. You don’t need to depend on a husband”, says Maria de Aparecida Leite, also known as Nega.

Although the earnings are more than welcome for the 52-year-old farmer, who makes her living from the land where she harvests corn, beans, cassava and various vegetables, Nega says that embroidery ended up becoming her true passion.

“It ends up being priceless, it’s very rewarding, a joy,” he says. She also learned as a child from other women in the family and says that art is in her blood. She enjoys representing the community and considers this to be her way of passing down old games and traditions. “That way, our identity never ends”, she celebrates.

In addition to embroidering, she participates in the natural dyeing of the fabrics used in the artifacts produced. With land, bark and plants from the region, the cloths gain the tones that represent the Jequitinhonha in the works sold online and in stores and galleries.

Although the production of embroidery is an individual task, the collective power of exchanging knowledge and experiences ended up bringing together and strengthening the traditions of the community, according to Tingui coordinator, Viviane Fortes. “Many of these women were sad, their husbands went to harvest sugarcane and coffee and they were left alone, disconnected from their power”.

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