Mutual Nurture of the Arts

Elvira Espejo Ayca (Ayllu Qaqachaka, Avaroa province, Oruro) is a Bolivian artist, documentary filmmaker, poet, weaver and storyteller of the oral tradition in the Aymara and Quechua languages. She was director of the Museo Nacional de Etnografía y Folklore in La Paz, Bolivia, and is author of the following publications: Sawutuq parla (2006), Phaqar kirki-t ́ikha takiy takiy. Canto a las flores (2006), Kaypi jaqhaypi. Por aquí, por allá (2018), Ciencia de tejer en los Andes. Estructuras y técnicas de faz de urdimbre (2012), El textil tridimensional. El tejido como objeto y como sujeto (2013) and Weaving Life: The Textile Collection of the Museo Nacional de Etnografía y Folklore, La Paz, Bolivia, Following the Productive Chain (2015). Espejo Ayca has carried out various exhibitions and research projects through which she defends the complementarity between the academy and ancestral traditions. Based on the concept of mutual nurturing, she proposes a paradigm of a reciprocal caring for the ecology.