From May 7 to September 11, 2022
Contemporary Fashion and Design Program
In collaboration with 90_20 Art Project

Project Room

The title Woman in Black opens a door to the immediacy of memory, to a place which, for one reason or another, has been encoded in the deepest structure of what we understand as the world. To some extent, there is always a woman in black occupying a singular space in our imaginations. In the case of Galicia, these women have been in themselves a social phenomenon for generations. Surviving her husband ―a statistical probability for every married woman― entails the consummation of a life project and a transformation towards absolute individuation. Whether catalyzed by the circumstances of widowhood or built up over long years amidst medicinal potions and the air of the sacristy, this assumption of an identity that involves donning the color of the crow is irreversibly sealed by the choice of attire. Never again will they be women of plaid or leopard-skin or floral prints. They will be only themselves, blending into the community of their peers and permanently expressed through a definitive decision. Receptacles of ancient wisdom, guardians and administrators of the oral traditions of the Galician people, of suppliant prayers and nocturnal perils, of all that poisons and that heals, of songs and recipes, they embody the silent power of the totemic. They have given up the enjoyment of abundance and accepted the color black, constituting a sort of memento homo. Shamanic figures intrinsic to the Galician countryside, they represent an unmistakable sign of regional identity, rooted in immemorial traditions where joie de vivre walks hand in hand with an awareness of one’s own mortality.