My article about textile designer and artist, Irene Bawer-Bimuyag, appeared in the beautiful print version of Selvedge magazine.

Here is the article below.

TATOO ARTIST  

Hand-weaving is instinctual for Irene Bawer-Bimuyag. A master weaver, skilled embroiderer and intuitive designer, Irene embellishes handwoven fabric with embroidered motifs in her colourful collection of blankets and wall hangings. Organic elements – leaves, plants and underwater creatures – are combined with traditional geometric patterns. The textile is her canvas, as she recreates images from her imagination and dreams. “Textiles, for me, are a celebration of life”.

 A backstrap loom is found in nearly every home in Mabilong, Irene’s village. This is the ancestral land of the Kalinga indigenous people, Irene’s community, nestled in mountainous Kalinga Province, on the Philippine island of Luzon.

Weaving skills and patterns are passed by oral tradition through the generations. Textiles connect Kalinga families to their deep-rooted cultural heritage. Costumes and ceremonial blankets are hand-woven for blessings and festivals to celebrate their ancestors and honour life, from birth to death. Clothes are also woven, and in more recent years, cloth has been made into souvenirs. “I feel lucky to be from this rich culture,” explains Irene, whose Kalinga name is ‘Lin-awa’. 

Weaving and embroidery designs are sacred, they’re learnt by heart. Each colour and design combination has a distinct meaning and is stuck to rigidly. Except by Irene. Her family have watched in amazement, as she transformed the ancient craft into a new artform. In adulthood, Irene explored worlds beyond her own. She travelled across the Philippine islands, to India and Canada. It is this thirst for new experiences, while fully expressing her Kalinga identity, that feeds the creative process.

A third-generation weaver, Irene is the youngest of eight children. Her sisters and mother, Maria Bawer, continue to develop the craft and train younger girls in the village. 15 families now work with Irene, weaving cloth for her collections. She communicates her ideas to the girls, who follow instructions for patterns and colours for the warp and weft. The designs live in her mind, they’re never put down on paper.

Strikingly beautiful, Irene’s arms are intricately tattooed, from shoulder to wrist. Tattoo body art has always existed in the community. “It's the highest expression of being a Kalinga woman,” Irene explains defiantly. And while it’s commonplace today not to get tattooed, it felt important for Irene to connect with her ancestry. Whang-od, famously coined ‘the oldest Kalinga tattoo artist’, is now in her 90s. She produced Irene’s body art using the ancient, arduous method of piercing and inking the skin with a thorn.

Bawer-Bimuyag created a textile series dedicated to tattoos. She embroidered patterns, which all hold cultural significance for Kalinga people, onto the cloth, from the geometric designs of a rice bundle and a hexagonal turtle’s back to the outline of a python.

The Philippines is formed of more than 7,000 islands. Over 100 indigenous communities live across the archipelago, each with a distinct dialect and textile heritage. Habi The Philippines Textile Council and its annual Manila-based Habi Fair, supports and promotes indigenous weavers and has helped hand-woven textiles to find value and prominence again. There has also been a growing interest from Filipino people to connect with their pre-colonial culture and textiles are so central to this history.  

 Irene has built a strong client base of collectors through Habi. The Council also aims to extend the production and supply of locally grown cotton to weavers. In Kalinga Province, they would once have woven with cotton and naturally dyed thread, but as cotton farming died out, and imported cotton became expensive, it was replaced by chemically dyed rayon. Though Irene hopes to weave in pure cotton once again.

In just a generation or two, life for the Kalinga community has changed beyond recognition. They wear western dress in everyday life, and Mabilong village continues to sustain itself through weaving only for festivals and ceremonies, alongside rice farming. But hand-weaving is being appreciated by new generations in the Philippines, which will help to sustain the practice. And creative mavericks like Irene Bawer-Bimuyag, demonstrate that it’s possible to reinvent tradition.