Neoartesanías: reconfiguraciones en el campo artesanal

Abstract

José Hernández Folk Art Museum is focused on crafts and artisans as cultural productions and producers. As an important actor in the patrimonialization processes, the museum closely follows any change in craft field according to places and historical moments. It has been visualized for a long time, certain transformations in the production of handicrafts that, although they are different to each other, lead us to think if we could identify them as a new phenomenon: “neoartesanía”. These are objects that join traditional components, elements, or processes with other innovative ones. We discover that this production occurs in collaborative work between craftmen, designers, technicians, or other professionals who converge on the same craftman. It is also overlapped by the problem of sustainability. In this work we will refer to how this phenomenon is constructed in Argentina, taking into account the dispersion of elements that constitute it, how the notion of “neoartesanía” is configured in the discourse of technicians, craftmen and researchers, considering particular cases and contexts. We will also make a brief reference to how it is understood in other Ibero-American areas. Far from defining a category, we are interested in capturing the several dimensions that “neoartesanía” shows as part of a more comprehensive social phenomenon such as the craft field in the current context of globalization.