A soft wind was blowing from the South of USA one morning in 1997 in the outskirts of Miami, Florida. Pilar Tóbón had a spark of a vision. That spark mapped out the productive route that her creative preoccupation could take. In those years, this Colombian textile artist formed part to the Latin American Art Museum of Florida. As the only artist working with textiles on the museum’s Board, Pilar Tóbón not only had the concern that textile art was not sufficiently known in Southern Florida but also that this was the case throughout Latin America, where it was virtually unknown beyond its national borders. And even so, within them, the situation was precarious, above all for those traditional artists of ancestral cultures. This concern of Tobon’s was situated precisely in moments when forums narrowed in their reception of textile exhibitions. From the visual arts, textiles were being exiled to another camp – to that of contemporary craft – after having enjoyed various decades of novel prominence and innovative presence.

These were moments when universities closed their textile departments and important textile biennials ceased to exist; moments in which the historic yet hushed thread of activity – mainly relegated to women – had to undergo a new adaptation because of this detour, obstacle, and closure. How to reaffirm the validity of the artistic intent in the creative production of textiles despite the fact that the hierarchic currents of artistic thought bounced it back to the home and as a pastime, in an era in which art moved and continues to move in new conceptual and theatrical levels? How to vindicate and restore the creative processes implicit in the handling of materials, forms, techniques, colors, spaces and history, while textile activity diversifies in so many manifestations that it becomes almost unclassifiable?

Tobón faced this test as well as many other textile artists. Yet in Tobón, the reply to such a challenge was marked by the route her decision, inscribed in Women in Textile Art, would take. Coming from a cultural textile heritage as ample and rich as in her native Colombia, Tobón chose to open a space for the textile ‘voices’ of artists to have a forum and a moment to be seen and heard – as well as be recognized – not only the voices of the threads of the past as magnificent cultural legacies but also the present voices in their diverse changing traditions and in their most innovative creative proliferations.

I Biennial inauguration, Miami 2000

Two years later, WTA again called textiles artists to its second bien nial in Miami, while the three subsequent biennials occurred in Venezuela, Costa Rica and Argentina respectively. Thus WTA’s international encounters took form, each one more well-attended and popular thanthe previous – five to date.

II Biennial Miami 2002

III Biennial, Venezuela 2004

But WTA is not only about textile biennials In the intervals between these major exhibitions, diverse and parallel projects have concurred: textile workshops for children – the second biennial incorporated a salon of children’s tapestries; links with the community of Southern Florida – traveling exhibitions and lectures on creativity in textiles; personal ties with artists in their studios in Europe, Japan and the Americas – collaborative exchange, documentation, and participating exhibits – such as the niche for WTA at the National Museum of Fine Arts of Chile within the International Encounter of Small Format Textiles Works in 2003 and the multiple traveling exhibitions of the growing collection of miniature works donated by the biennial’s participants.

As part of the IV Biennial in Costa Rica, and using the solid traffic of artists from several countries in Latin America, the Organization warmly hosted the Red Iberoamericana del Textil -TEXTILIA, foundation that will work alongside WTA to benefit Textile Art - “with whom we shall be walking hand in hand for the benefit of textile art,” Tobón affirms.

From its beginnings, several things have distinguished WTA’s encounters from other textile events, imbuing it with its own growing special character, between the two continents of the Americas and the rest of the world. And although WTA sought initially to highlight Latin America’s artistic textile activity lacking in sufficient recognition, it has equally maintained itself open to artists both from developed countries as from less privileged countries. This imparts a democratic spirit and reputation to its events, converting them into grounds of cultural and artistic exchange, coexistence, and inspiration among its participants from the entire planet. Likewise and consistently, in each Biennial, visual documentation has been present with the publication of a color catalog in which every participating piece has its place. Additionally, video-CD’s, its own website (www. wta-online.org), and reviews in international magazines of textile relevance amplify its coverage.

To open a space that did not exist but which was desired – the increasing number of its participants suffices to demonstrate its indispensable character – is, in retrospective, the unfolding of that vein that Pilar Tobón tapped that morning in 1997 and which she scratched and continues scratching in order to explore it more deeply and thoroughly.

Working from her local base and adopted city, that vein resulted in a stratum of creativity dispersed throughout the world that awaited a forum, an opening, in order to make a presence in multiple forms.

After the second biennial, the directive council of the organization chose Latin America as its platform for projection given the absence of an equally- comprehensive activity. And it is as of this point that WTA biennials adopt a nomadic semblance – with the purpose of generating a questioning in this field of expression – that mayor and diverse textile projects take form, and the hope that younger generations inspired by art as an agent for expressing and communicating will come to demand educational changes.

The subsequent WTA biennials were coordinated by the coordinating hosts of each country together with WTA. This task implies not only a challenge in communications and travels to and from its meetings but also in the efforts summed up regarding sponsorships. At the same time, each biennial is characterized by its coordination team, sponsors, and joint vision, along with the idiosyncrasies of each host country. It is important to highlight that this mobility, or rather, nomadism, at the same time, sustains the rooted principles on which WTA was founded – to promote textile art on various levels.

IV Biennial workshop, 2006

Worthy of mention is the recent introduction of the Olga de Amaral Award, at the IV Biennial in Costa Rica. Its trophy, which bears this renowned Colombian artist’s name, was given to de Amaral herself on this first occasion in recognition of her exemplary trajectory. In WTA’s upcoming encounters it will be conferred on an artist of distinguished, longstanding excellence.

IV biennial, Costa Rica 2006

Given that a high percentage of the small format works of the Biennials have been donated by the participating artists to WTA’s Permanent Collection – comprising at the moment more than 250 pieces of works from 45 countries – these have been shown continuously in diverse venues. These exhibitions have not only have occurred in galleries, museums, universities and cultural centers of Southern Florida, as originally intended, but also in many countries.

When the Organization Women in Textile Art – (Mujeres en el Arte Textil) reached its tenth year, it underwent a subtle name change from Women in Textile Art to World Textile Art – Arte Textil del Mundo. The decision was based on the fact that for the first time in the 4th WTA Biennial held in Costa Rica, men participated in a supportive and cooperative partnership, that is, in a joint venture. Therefore, in November 2007 in Miami, we gathered to celebrate WTA’s 10th Anniversary with new name – to better represent our new profile, and thus validate a wider and more extensive criteria – that of broadening the participation field to include all artists who creatively express their art through textile means. Thus, without deviating from our intended course, WTA is working relentlessly towards a stronger promotion of any shape, content, and form of contemporary textile art.

The challenge that WTA has, is a major one – to open an unexplored path that ties its recurrent promotions of textile art to an adequate bridge that benefits, contemporary artistic creativities on the American continents as for the rest of the world.

This challenge goes beyond one person and one organization. It is a mission Tobón is conscious of: “Together, members and participants, let us form new roads and even more diverse and satisfying ones.” The future for WTA is full of enthusiasm and a positive attitude. This future harbors lots of work and doings for the creative ingeniousness of textile artists, collaborators, and sympathizers

Yosi Anaya, PhD