Bengunâ: woman seers

Size: 200x330cm;  6.5x10.8ft

Master weaver: Mario Bautista Martínez

Materials and methods: fine merino yarns blend with angora goat wool and criollo sheep wool hand dyed with natural dyes: Bèé (cochineal), and aniline dye for the dark black color . Handwoven on a Zapotec style loom of the 16th century adapted from European styles. Woven using a 7 threads per inch reed and wool rayon blend for warp.

Design partterns and symbols. 

This rug represents the Nawal pattern and for woman they are known as Benguná, the people that see. The elders say that all woman are born with a strong nawal awareness that connects them to nature and the spiritual world, as givers of life, they are natural seers of the great spirit and its manifestations. Woman have the ability to cross back and forth into the dream world more effortlessly and they find it easier to tune into their intuition, mothers ask their children about their dreams every morning and guide them into navigating and understanding their dreams for instance.

The nawal pattern is like a mudra pattern that is obtained by joining both hands by the thumbs with the fists curled into a spiral, it looks like two fibonacci spirals united, this represent the union of the left and the righ side of our awarenes (Nawal and Tonal), the conscious and the unconscious, the masculine and the femenine, the day and night, the awake world and the spiritual world. They key is to live a life of balance where these two types of perception is mantained in equilibrium.