Since 2002 Mónica Millán (1960, Misiones province, Argentina) has been working with the women weavers of the Paraguayan village of Yataity del Guairá. This village is considered the birthplace of the weaving technique known as ao po’i (“thin” or “narrow fabric” in the Guaraní language) and jú lace. M. Millán considers textile art a creative link between spiritual quests and ecological concerns, with the understanding that nature must be protected by safeguarding and integrating culture and the ecosystem, both repositories of what defines us as humanity. From the time of her project El vértigo de lo lento [The vertigo of going slowly, 2002] until today, M. Millán has carried out art projects in conjunction with communities in a process of dialogues and interchanges to improve their living conditions while always respecting their environment. The core concept in all of her work is that life is calling out to us and that it is a space for cultural creation, the transmission of knowledge and spirituality.

Mónica Millán, El vértigo de lo lento [The vertigo of going slowly] (detail), 2002–2024, table with different ao po’i textiles and jú lace, installation of variable dimentions © Courtesy Mónica Millán

We are, undeniably, witnessing a disastrous ecological crisis caused by human actions. In this context, M. Millán’s work is intensely activist, with the goal of reversing this situation. She works to care for and protect the Earth by using the needle arts as a basic tool to raise awareness and bring about social and human change.

El vértigo de lo lento marks the moment when the artist settled in Yataity del Guairá so that she could work with the weavers there. Amongst them, two of the most outstanding are Digna López and her sister Pablina, who have assisted M. Millán in her study of the myths and knowledge associated with weaving and embroidery. In this sense, textile art is a medium through which a community’s culture is transmitted, and at the same time it is a repository of this people’s guardianship and protection of nature, since amongst the many crops cultivated by the village’s people the most important is the plant that provides the raw material for weaving. White cotton, the red mandyju pytã and brown cotton are native to the Guairá area, while green cotton was brought from Brazil in 2021 and is still being tried out. The crossbreeding of red and white cotton produce a very particular colour called ruby, which is now used in these designs. Many fabrics are made with naturally coloured thread, so that no dyeing is necessary.

In Yataity del Guairá, women, men, elders and children weave outdoors under peteribí, lapacho, ibirapitá and other trees. In the open patios of their homes, the weavers sit around a table to spin and tell stories. Young girls take weavings from house to house so that people can complete them with scallop motifs, jú lace embroidery and specific kinds of finishings. In short, these pieces are the product of the entire community, transmitting knowledge from generation to generation. This is why the circles organised around the act of weaving also spin stories and cosmologies in which water is the primordial element from which the others arise. There is no division between nature and culture; they are two sides of the same coin. Nature shapes culture, and culture safeguards nature. In the diary the artist began keeping in 2002 and where she continues to record her experiences and the lessons this life has taught her, I read: “Digna and Don Enrique grow cotton in their dirt patio next to the veranda where they both weave on looms. They pick a bud and open it before my eyes and those of a village girl. Don Enrique puts it in the weaving hoe. It begins to vibrate and the cotton bud opens up into transparent thread. After it inflates, they put it on a spindle. And there, in a split second, right in front of us, thread appears. The girl and I both burst out laughing in astonishment.
We continued on our way to the home of a lacemaker, and there I watched her as she concentrated on a little bundle on her skirt. She opened it up, and very carefully picked out the precious cotton seeds.”¹

Mónica Millán, Si gano mucho como mucho, si gano poco como poco [If I earn a lot, I eat a lot, If I don’t make much, I don’t eat much] (detail), from the series El vértigo de lo lento [The vertigo of going slowly], 2008, pencil on paper, 150 x 200 cm © Courtesy Mónica Millán

Mónica Millán, Si gano mucho como mucho, si gano poco como poco [If I earn a lot, I eat a lot, If I don’t make much, I don’t eat much], from the series El vértigo de lo lento [The vertigo of going slowly], 2008, pencil on paper, 150 x 200 cm © Courtesy Mónica Millán

Through the years, the work in progress El vértigo de lo lento has been recreated in different ways, depending on what M. Millán has produced through her collaboration and cohabitation with the weavers. Here I will focus on an installation for her exhibition at the Fundación Santander de Buenos Aires,² consisting of a video projection and a spinning table with her ao po’i and jú lace weavings organised into piles in front of a drawing entitled Si gano mucho como mucho, si gano poco como poco [If I earn a lot, I eat a lot, If I don’t make much, I don’t eat much, 2008], quoting the weaver Florencia Legal de Barreto. There are also portraits of the weavers, textile pieces resulting from M. Millán’s work with the community, and some notes on her personal introspection.

M. Millán’s grandmother and mother taught her the needle arts. Her love for folk fabrics and determination to demolish antiquated hierarchies in art led her to work with the fabric-makers of Yataity del Guayrá. During the long periods she spends in the village, she studies the processes involved in the act of weaving, paying attention to the natural environment that contextualises this activity, its landscapes and customs, its time cycles, the emotional attachments it creates and other questions. In the video El vértigo de lo lento, Enrique Narvaja, better known as Don Enrique, says, “Ao po’i is like a bird that goes around the world educating people. Everyone asks, ‘How is this work done?’ This is how. This is how.”³ The video documents the artist’s first seven years of visiting and living in the community. “We eat according to our work. If I earn a lot, I eat a lot; if I don’t make much, I don’t eat much. I’m going to stay here until I die. I’m not going anywhere,”⁴ says weaver F. Barreto. The reality is as simple as it is harsh: weaving is the warp and woof their life.

Mónica Millán, El vértigo de lo lento [The vertigo of going slowly] (detail), 2024, pieces of jú lace and drawings made by Ángeles Giulianna Goiris (eleven year-old girl) © Courtesy Mónica Millán

The drawing whose title comes from F. Barreto’s words is testament to the relationship between these women and girls and their natural environment. It also reflects the links between weaving cotton, nature and the human body. The weavers blend into a landscape of climbing plants, insects, amphibians, butterflies and magnificent victories. The light in the village is soft, with almost evanescent shades of grey that convey the sacredness of this place. “I like to think of my drawings as if they were the skin of the paper, as a large weft that could be detached from it,”⁵ says M. Millán. At the same time, the drawing’s centre concentrates the greatest tension, in contrast to the dramatic emptiness of the edges. Yet M. Millán has developed a drawing technique that emulates the weavers’ fabrics. As she wrote in her diary:

“Ibyturuzu mountains
rain
fog
the flora is transformed into a lace
I shoot slides.
Portraits of light and shadow.
They pose for me in their own place.

I reproduce the slide on paper and translate the projection of light and shadow into an abstract shape with a very delicate line, I barely lean, I lose the general sense of the image and I lose myself. This results in millimetric drawings where the embroiderer melts into her context and there the lace appears again. They themselves are lace, embedded in their landscape.”⁶

Mónica Millán, Guaridas [Nests], from the series El vértigo de lo lento [The vertigo of going slowly], 2002, earth, straw, sugar molasses, dimentions variable © Courtesy Mónica Millán

Mónica Millán, Guaridas [Nests], from the series El vértigo de lo lento [The vertigo of going slowly], 2002, earth, straw, sugar molasses, dimentions variable © Courtesy Mónica Millán

Between the video, drawings, portraits and chairs there is a table with piles of ao po’i fabrics and jú lace. There are also adobe Guaridas [Nests] that the artist constructed using the palm of her hand as a measure. They are reminiscent of the natural architecture of takurús, solidified earthen anthills found in the valleys of Argentina’s Misiones province. The first tatacuás – clay ovens in which the local people cook chipa guazú, Paraguayan soup and other dishes – were takurús. M. Millán draws her inspiration from them, along with the region’s geography, the Ibyturuzu mountains, to make nests in the shape of her hand. As she wrote in her diary,

“hill
  tacurú (made by the termite ants)
  Tatacuá (people’s ovens)

All of this was transformed into shapes made of earth, straw, sugar molasses (a mixture of adobe and tatacuá, a ‘house’ that feeds people). I work with the hollow of my hand, the left hand held open and the right joined to and embracing the shape of the other hand. This ‘hollowing’ from the outside makes an empty ‘hollow’ (belly-like cavity) inside. The shape of the hollow of the hand is imprinted on the piece, which is 80 centimetres in diameter and 60 centimetres high, like the shapes of the embroidery mountains with seeds as stones. The movement I make in this process is the same as the village’s geographic location: circles on circles like a snail constructing its shell around itself, or the ants building their tacurú to live inside.”⁷

Mónica Millán, El vértigo de lo lento [The vertigo of going slowly] 2024, installation view for the exhibition Guyra ka’aguy / Pájaro Salvaje. Textiles de Mónica Millán, Fundación Santander, Buenos Aires, 2024 © Courtesy Mónica Millán

Mónica Millán, El vértigo de lo lento [The vertigo of going slowly] 2024, installation view for the exhibition Guyra ka’aguy / Pájaro Salvaje. Textiles de Mónica Millán, Fundación Santander, Buenos Aires, 2024 © Courtesy Mónica Millán

All of these pieces form a universe linked by the artist’s emotional attachments, the weavers and the nature around them. M. Millán’s activism uses the needle arts to subvert the binary oppositions between art and craft, artist and handcrafter, so predominant even in the art world. She mounts exhibitions unabashedly featuring textile works that take a long time to produce, a time that today’s capitalist and patriarchal system is trying to destroy by flooding the world with industrial fabrics. In the face of this threat, the textile village of Yataity del Guayrá is searching for other means of survival, leading them to abandon these arts.

M. Millán works side-by-side with the weavers to protect this field of knowledge. She believes that every stitch in embroidery and weaving that is no longer performed and no longer named falls into grey oblivion, a loss of knowledge that diminishes language. Weaving fulfils the symbolic role of uniting the material and immaterial worlds. Thread made of cotton grown by local peasants, retaining its natural colour, is interwoven to save the stories of humanity’s time on this Earth and make up a cosmology that culturally defines the community. Her activism lies in the conservation and preservation of the arts that link language with culture and nature.