This work brings together two textile traditions from southern China: clay silk from the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong, and textiles from the Dong tradition of Guizhou, dyed with indigo. Both stem from slow and deeply labour-intensive processes, in which earth, plants, minerals, the sun and, in the Dong tradition, egg white transform the surface, colour, durability and character of the fabric.

Through patchwork and contemporary forms, Marcella Echavarría explores what happens when inherited materials and knowledge are transplanted into new contexts without losing their history. Hacer Propio understands tradition not as something static that must remain intact, but as a living language that endures precisely because it can be passed on, reinterpreted and transformed.

The title contains a deliberate tension: ‘making one’s own’ means incorporating something into a personal language, but it also touches on the complex territory of appropriation.

At its core, the work proposes an ethic of relationship, not of possession: approaching a material by listening to its processes, recognising its genealogies and allowing inherited knowledge to remain alive through new forms.

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Artwork included in the exhibition “Interdependencias”, Official Section of PHotoESPAÑA.