Camelid wool fiber; tapestryexpand_more
Gift of funds from Regis Foundationexpand_more 2005.135
Colorful woven textiles are a hallmark of the Chimu culture. They were high status items created with incredible skill and were prized for their texture, lightness and pattern. The decoration woven into Chimu fabrics was rarely narrative, but instead emphasized the repetition of animal and human forms in bold colors, especially red, which symbolized life. One set of alternating panels in this textile depicts a warrior in full headdress holding a weapon in one hand and an enemy's head in the other. The rest show a jaguar man wrestling with a being with a birdlike head. These supernatural figures illustrate the universal struggle and eventual balance between opposing natural realms such as the sky and earth, a concept central to the Andean belief system.
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