#NewMayaLanguage receives a special MENTION by the III Iberoamerican Design Biennale #BID12 Jury

Mi Diseño y Artesania Sostenible de Joyería seleccionado para Exhibición y Finalista para Premio Bienal Iberoamericana de Diseño en Madrid BID12

Banda Celestial colección de joyería sostenible en piedra, una de las tres colecciones bajo el tema Nuevo Lenguaje Maya seleccionadas por el jurado de la BID12

Manos Cosechando colección de joyería sostenible jade sobre piedra, una de las tres colecciones bajo el tema Nuevo Lenguaje Maya seleccionadas por el jurado de la BID12

Plantando Semillas huipil fabricado a mano bajo el tema Nuevo Lenguaje Maya. Parte de colección de ropa seleccionada por el jurado de la BID12

Mi trabajo Nuevo Lenguaje Maya: Manos Cosechando y Banda Celestial ha sido seleccionado para formar parte de la Exposición BID12 y es uno de los finalistas a los diferentes premios de esta edición.

La exposición BID12 tendrá lugar en noviembre de 2012. La semana inaugural de la BID será del 26 al 30 de noviembre.

Para la producción de esta línea de accesorios, Frida entrenó a talladores de origen indígena mesoaméricano en una técnica que mezcla de forma innovadora recursos nativos como el jade, la obsidiana, piedra toba y plata reciclada, rescatando así artesanía y habilidades ancestrales en peligro de extinción.

Las narrativas visuales de los diseños recomponen los significados y formas de los jeroglíficos mayas de 2000 años de antigüedad y permiten al portador leer y aprender de formas de vida indígena actuales y ancestrales.

Artículo de El Nuevo Lenguaje Maya como en UnosTiposDuros.com

Enviado por Paco Calles el Martes, 14 agosto 20124 Comentarios

Frida Larios ha rediseñado los jeroglíficos de 2000 años de antiguedad de los nativos mayas para crear un nuevo lenguaje 100% visual. Frida ha construido un conjunto de pictogramas que ha recopilado y decodificado en un libro didáctico con el mismo título. El Nuevo Lenguaje Maya es accesible a cualquier persona interesada en la compleja escritura maya. Su metodología de rediseñar, recomponer y aplicar a la vida contemporánea el contenido de una escritura ancestral, es única. Inspirada por los polifacéticos mayas, ha aplicado este nuevo lenguaje en diferentes medios, tales como: señalización de sitios arqueológicos, diseño tipográfico, juguetes educativos, prendas de vestir, accesorios de moda que cuentan la forma de vida de los actuales y antiguos nativos de centroamérica; además de promover significados culturales e iconográficos, la educación y el juego. El Nuevo Lenguaje Maya rescata la lengua muerta escrita creada por la civilización maya en Mesoamérica 300 aC. Los mayas, antes de ser historiadores, matemáticos, astrónomos o escribanos, eran artistas. Su escritura no sólo reunía la vida política y otros asuntos históricos, pero era también una obra de arte en sí misma, manifestada a través de diferentes medios: esculturas en piedra, murales, manuscritos caligráficos, productos utilitarios, cerámica, textiles, prendas de vestir, etc. Ciertamente no hay mucha diferencia entre un artista o diseñador practicante en nuestros días. Lastimosamente dicha profesión no es tan valorada como en los viejos tiempos. Tiempos en los que según el epigrafista Michael D. Coe: “Los artistas podían ser reyes”. Era realmente una profesión real.

Muy especialmente, el objetivo de Frida es que su nuevo lenguaje jeroglífico sea democrático, accesible y amigable, especialmente para los ciudadanos comunes de Mesoamérica. Muchas de ellos son iletrados y el Nuevo Lenguaje Maya logra tocar ambas: sus fibras emocionales y cognitivas. Es un lenguaje sin palabras que hace que estos pobladores se sientan incluidos en un mundo donde las letras del alfabeto son sus mayores obstáculos para el progreso. Frida Larios obtuvo una Maestría en Diseño de la Comunicación de la Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, University of the Arts London, en donde también ejerció como profesora adjunta durante muchos años e inició proyecto del Nuevo Lenguaje Maya en el año 2004. Central Saint Martins estaba ubicada a dos cuadras del British Museum en donde se encuentran algunos de los dinteles tallados más importantes del mundo maya, y haber sido la primera mujer salvadoreña en estudiar allí, le inspiró a buscar sus propias raíces dentro de una institución y una ciudad con marcadas tendencias vanguardistas. El haber estado en contacto con ambos: una cultura milenaria y al mismo tiempo las expresiones artísticas más contemporáneas, provocó la idea de revivir el lenguaje jeroglífico de los mayas. Uno de los mayores logros que Frida ha alcanzado con su proyecto fue el haber sido la única latinoamérica en haber ganado el Sign Design Award otorgado por la Sign Design Society en Londres en el 2005 y la única latinoamericana seleccionada para exhibir enBeijing Typography ’09 en el Museo de la Academía Central de Bellas Artes en Beijing, China junto a 80 figuras del diseño tipográfico internacional. En la actualidad, Frida es embajadora de INDIGO, la Red Internacional de Diseño Indígena de ICOGRADA y dirige el estudio de diseño cultural: Frida Larios con sede en el área de la bahía de San Francisco. Desde ahi atiende a clientes en diseño de: información, tipografía, señalética, moda, accesorios, juguetes y arte plástico. Su galardonado Nuevo Lenguaje Maya ha sido ampliamente expuesto, coleccionado y publicado en todo el mundo.

    http://www.fridalarios.com

https://fridalarios.wordpress.com

http://twitter.com/fridalarios

http://facebook.com/LariosFrida

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Back to our Roots to Become Different

Article featured in Yorokobu Design Magazine July-August 2010 print edition in Madrid, Spain.

By Marcus Hurst

Indigo promotes a coming together between designers and indigenous culture in search for distinctive elements in a world that is day by day more homogenous.
“Globalisation is standardising everything.  We share languages, in many cases, English.  A uniform design aesthetic is starting to impose itself.  In an environment where the local and global breathe next to one another we cannot forget about our roots”, said Russell Kennedy, Icograda (International Council of Graphic Design Associations) President.

Since 2006 Kennedy is one of Indigo’s promoters, an organisation that helps study and experiment with indigenous design.  The aim is to explore different ways of highlighting and exploiting its identity without appropriating its customs.

“It is a very delicate subject because a lot of the times it has many political and colonial connotations.  With Indigo we have wanted to create a network of designers that explore this field.  At first, it was born to study the aboriginal peoples and the American Indians.  Upon advancing with the project we realised it is a theme that can be applied to any part of the world.  It has special relevance in Asia where countries are trying to establish a differentiating element.”

According to Kennedy, cultures’ over-protection prevents evolution. “In Australia, on the other hand, there is the belief that indigenous cultures need to be protected above all and the museums do it very well.  But sometimes this obsession doesn’t allow for their culture to change and evolve.”

The New Maya Language
Frida Larios is one of the designers who actively participates in Indigo as an ambassador.  In her case, she has done by exploring ways of redesigning Maya art and design and translating it to our present context.

In what year did you start the project? It started in 2004, when I was studying my masters in Communication Design at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design in London.  I was the first Salvadorean woman to study there – ¿How could I not look for my own roots within an institution, and city, with marked avant-gardé tendencies? The Maya are one of the founding six pillars of the civilised world.  Nonetheless, there is a lack of recognition of their intelligent and advanced hieroglyphic language’s art form, within Mesoamerica – a term used for the shared Maya geographical area within Central America – itself, and beyond its boundaries.

How has it evolved? The project is a unique system, in content and style, which rescues the dead written language created by the Maya civilisation across Mesoamerica 300 BC.  The New Maya Language’s vision is the recreation, re-composition and contemporary life’s application in different media: art, product and fashion design, brand identities, information design, navigation and education in archaeological sites and public spaces, children’s toys.  It has been warmly received by public and private entities in Central America.  Through its applications, it aspires to promote culture, education and play.  These three characteristics are its developmental roots.  Whether it is by instigating conceptual thinking through a 0 – 12 year-old boy or girl’s game, through a t-shirt design or, simply by being appreciated through my artworks, which to-date have been acquired by collectors around the world.

Do you continue to explore indigenous art application in design? This is a project that has as much application ground as desired – it can even be expanded to other hieroglyphic languages.  Hence, my goal is for it to always remain democratic, accessible, not only to northern hemispheres’ academics who are the ones who command the hieroglyphic writing knowledge, but to common Mesoamerican citizens.  Above all, and this is one of the shared objectives with my fellow INDIGO colleagues, I want it to be inclusive of native inhabitants so that they have the opportunity to recreate themselves in it.  A lot of these populations are illiterate and my New Maya Language, in a certain way, even touches their emotional fiber.  It is a language without words that makes them feel included in a world where the letters of the alphabet are their uppermost barrier.

What does a designer have to consider when inspiring him or herself in indigenous art and communication? Does he or she have to avoid appropriating his or her culture? In my case I illustrated how it came to light, decoded it so that others could understand where each line, each form and each concept came from.  First by explaining in my book, the original Maya hieroglyphic language to then arrive to what I can call my own, or of my own intellectual property, and the formula for each pictogram’s creation.

Before being historians, mathematicians, or astronomers, they were artists.  Their writing not only gathered the political life and other relevant affairs, but it was also a work of art in itself manifested through different mediums: stone sculpture, ceramics, murals, calligraphic manuscripts, garments and utilitarian products, etc.  There is not much difference between a practicing artist or designer in our days, right? Except that our profession is not as valued as in those old times, in which – like Mayanist Michael D. Coe says – “artists could even be kings.”  It was indeed a royal profession.  When a designer attempts to develop indigenous-iconography based designs, he or she must preserve the ancestral artists’ spirit at the time of creation, highlighting, and not merely reproducing, their own culture.

Do you think Latin American countries should deepen in their roots to reinforce design with an individual identity instead of obsessing with what Anglo-Saxon countries do? But of course. There are parameters at the time of designing, or international design standards, which in fact, were born in the Anglo-Saxon world.  But this is very different to searching for inspiration in European styles that breed from their own history and tradition.  Why not look for inspiration in what is ours, which by the way is very different to the rest? Indigenous cultures had magnificent artistic development, sourcing themselves in their natural and social environment, respecting it.  If we Central American designers, had been able to continue until our present days with that legacy – a development defrauded by many conquests during the course of over 500 years – the roles would be reversed and it would be the western world looking for reference in our culture.  Today, we would be kings.

www.indigodesignnetwork.org
www.fridalarios.com

You can download the Spanish published PDF version here:

Yorokobu – Volver a las Raíces para Ser Diferentes – versión Español.

Or comment on the article on the INDIGO website.

Frida in Scandinavia and Europe

Have started my European tour with a leg in Helsinki.

You are wondering what am I doing here?! The answer is–-presenting some New Maya Language surface designs. Will be here in Helsinki until Thursday the 18th. On Thursday I am off to Paris to see some fashion designers, and meeting-up with my dear friend Ana María Echeverria and Sali Sasaki, INDIGO Ambassador. On Sunday 21st November Madrid awaits with its Iberoamerican Design Biennale 2010 where my Green Child puzzle will be exhibited. Finishing in London from Thursday the 25th to Sunday the 28th to see Gaby my sister, my brother-in-law, niece and some clients.

So there you go, have published my itinerary so that my friends and family know where I am!

Next I will be sharing some first pictures and short descriptions.

From the Tropics to the Nordics

Photography contribution by Tyler Orsburn and Rosa Meléndez©