Within the framework of the International Congress of Americanists (ICA), and within its thematic line Art and Aesthetics, the study of clothing, textiles and fashion is established not as an analysis of the accessory, but as a fundamental coordinate for deciphering the complexity of Latin American identity. From an integrative sociocultural perspective, dress functions as a sophisticated material and immaterial archive in which the threads that bind memory, resistance, mestizaje and the corporeality of the region are woven.<\/p>\n
From aesthetic and cultural studies, dress is a system of nonverbal communication and a technology for constructing the social fabric. In Latin America, clothing not only covers the body but actively negotiates the boundaries of ethnicity, class and gender. Studying contemporary fashion and local design circuits allows us to understand how communities engage with globalization, transforming consumption into an act of cultural agency. Clothing thus becomes a territory of dispute and reaffirmation against hegemonic global narratives.<\/p>\n
For its part, the genealogy of garment artifacts contributes a deep historical perspective by tracing threads of continuity and change. Pre-Hispanic backstrap looms, ancestral dyeing techniques and the complex iconography of huipiles, ponchos or polleras are not static museum pieces; they are dynamic and vital garment artifacts. Textile ethnology demonstrates how indigenous and Afro-descendant cosmovisions survived, creating constant tension with colonial visions from Europe, adapting and hybridizing to shape most of the continent’s political conflicts.<\/p>\n
Finally, physical anthropology and bioanthropology close this complex social fabric by reminding us that clothing interacts directly with the biological body and its environment. The analysis of textile fragments in archaeological and mortuary contexts is crucial for bioanthropologists, as these materialities reveal patterns of health, status, exchange routes and microclimatic adaptation among past populations. Likewise, clothing has historically shaped corporeality itself, functioning as an interface between human biology, body modifications and the sociocultural demands of each era.<\/p>\n
For all these reasons, proposing a transdisciplinary approach to dress at the ICA is an urgent task. Latin American textiles are not merely objects of aesthetic appreciation; they are the “social skin” of a continent. Their study allows us to decolonize the history of fashion and understand regional identity not as a fixed essence, but as a dynamic canvas and a living fabric that continues to be woven day by day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","simposio_area":[47],"class_list":["post-10363","simposio","type-simposio","status-publish","hentry","simposio_area-arte-y-estetica"],"yoast_head":"\n