Interrogating translucence: clarifying philippine piña materiality
Date
2023
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
In the past three decades, Philippine piña (pineapple-leaf fiber) textiles have been the subject of numerous essays, books, and exhibitions. However, many contemporary authors and museum practitioners are confused concerning the exact material properties of these fibers and cloth. Their similarity to fibers such as cotton, silk, and linen can lead museums in the United States to misidentify their collections of nineteenth-century piña textiles. This confusion is not only limited to present-day museum collections. A scrapbook compiled by New Jersey resident Sarah Bradway Harris in the late 1880s reveals an historical example of this slippage, in which she labels fragments of silk gauze as piña. ☐ This thesis presents three levels of reading for the connoisseurship of piña textiles. First, one can read piña cloth for certain visual and haptic characteristics unique to the material. The second level contextualizes these characteristics with the tools and processes of producing piña, articulating the dynamic properties of piña fiber through its craft practice. Lastly, one can interpret piña textiles as physical embodiments of their cultural contexts. ☐ Drawing from fieldwork conducted with piña weaving communities in Aklan, Philippines, this process of reading draws from the enduring cultural knowledge of making piña. For contemporary piña weaving communities, this material expertise arises from a lived, cultural practice of making these textiles. Within this knowledge, these three levels of analyzing piña are neither isolated from one another nor static. Rather, piña connoisseurship melds biological, artistic, and cultural expertise, the knowledge of which allows local and global histories that are woven in the cloth to emerge.
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Keywords
Materiality, Philippines, Piña, Pineapple, Pineapple-leaf fiber, Textiles