José Miguel Marty Lizana

Ensayo Atacama

Basketweaver

©Jose Miguel Marty Lizana

©Romina Cid

©Jose Miguel Marty Lizana

Figures of mysterious basketry

José Miguel began his journey through craftsmanship around 2014
His specialties are basketry in vegetable fibre and painting
His pieces are a symbiosis of the ancestral and the modern

José Miguel Marty Lizana's training began with applied and visual arts. After a reflection on identity, dependence on materials and culture as the interaction of human beings with their environment, his work began to focus on the rescue of crafts, techniques, or popular construction systems. "There is more concrete rootedness when working with resources or materials from a specific territory," says José Miguel. "I have already spent years studying popular techniques and applying them, dialoguing and articulating activities with artisans. So far I have specialised in working with vegetable fibre, wool and other native raw materials," he adds. "I have had many different teachers throughout Chile."

Interview

©Romina Cid

©Jose Miguel Marty Lizana

When did you realise that craftsmanship was your thing?: While volunteering in Puerto Saavedra (southern Chile) in 2014. There I learned to work with vegetable fibre basketry. Seeing its aesthetic potential and the independence of raw materials to develop the craft, I decided to turn most of my artistic work to traditional crafts with a contemporary approach.
Is that the beginning of your approach to the Mapuche culture?: That year I learned their traditional crafts to see how I could help them in their own creative language. From then on, I never stopped learning traditional crafts centred on the raw materials of the territories where I travelled.
How relevant is Chile to your work?: My work in traditional crafts is built exclusively from raw materials that I obtain in the specific territory I visit or inhabit. For the last five years I have been in the Atacama region, in the north of Chile.
How do you combine innovation and tradition in your daily work?: I mix them by working with traditional crafts, but mixing different raw materials in the making of a piece. In some cases, I even mix more than one craft in the construction of an object.

José Miguel Marty Lizana is a master artisan: he began his career in 2003 and he started teaching in 2015