Mexico
Hello, I'm Frida
Luna
I work with cochineal — the red extracted from insects raised on cactus, as my Zapotec ancestors did before synthetic colour existed. Silk takes that red deeper than any other surface.
A Oaxacan artist of Zapotec descent, Frida Luna weaves pre-Hispanic cosmological symbols into contemporary textile design. Her palette is drawn from cochineal red, indigo blue, and the black of charred copal wood — the same natural dyes her ancestors used centuries before synthetic color existed.
The first natural dye I ever made, I was eleven years old. My aunt showed me how to dry cochineal insects, grind them on a stone, dissolve them in water with lime juice. The red that came out of that bowl was not a colour I had ever seen in a tube. It was alive. I have been chasing that alive quality ever since. Synthetic red is a statement. Cochineal red is a question — it changes with the mordant, with the pH, with the fabric. On silk, with an alum mordant, it becomes a deep carmine that shifts toward purple in certain light. I have been trying to achieve that colour for twenty years and I am still not sure I have found it. I bought four large potatoes at the Mercado de Abastos in Oaxaca specifically to carve my first galib test. I know linden wood would have been better. But I wanted to feel the logic first, quickly, with something I could throw away. I carved the Zapotec calendar glyph for ‘movement’ — the same symbol my grandmother has tattooed on her wrist. When that glyph arrives in Shaki silk, pressed in Narmin’s workshop with pomegranate resist and my cochineal dye, two of the oldest natural dyes in the world will meet in one piece of fabric. Pre-Columbian cochineal. Caucasian pomegranate. I am not religious. But I think that matters.
— Frida Luna, Oaxaca, Mexico
The motif
Zapotec Ollin — movement, earthquake
Oaxaca, Mexico · Zapotec calendar · pre-Columbian
Dyed by hand in Shaki, Azerbaijan
Collections by Frida Luna
The Oaxaca Collection
Cochineal and indigo natural dyes · 18 pieces
18 pieces
Shop →Know a craft like this? Tell us about your work.
