Craft, design and decoloniality practices: opportunities for co-creation in Latin America

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4013/sdrj.2025.181.09

Abstract

This article aims to reflect on the relationship between design and craft from a decolonial perspective, with particular attention to embroidery as a cultural, political, and aesthetic practice in Latin America and the Caribbean. It argues that collaborative processes between designers and artisans may either reproduce colonial hierarchies or foster more equitable and horizontal forms of knowledge production, depending on how power relations are negotiated. Grounded in decolonial studies and Southern epistemologies, the research adopts a qualitative and interdisciplinary approach based on documentary analysis and theoretical reflection. By tracing a brief genealogy of embroidery and examining contemporary experiences of textile activism and co-creation, the article highlights embroidery as a practice of resistance, memory, and cultural continuity. It concludes that embroidery constitutes a continuous act of presence, reinvention, and transmission of ancestral knowledge and aesthetics, contributing to socially just and culturally grounded futures in Latin America.

Author Biography

Nadja Maria Mourão, Universidade do Estado de Minas Gerais

PhD and Master's degree in Design from the Postgraduate Program in Design at the State University of Minas Gerais (PPGD/UEMG). Her thesis was titled "Social Technologies: Guidelines for Sociocreative Enterprises" (2015), and her dissertation, awarded by the Ministry of Culture/Secretariat of Creative Economy (2012), was titled "Sustainability in Handicraft Production with Vegetable Waste: a practical initiative of Systemic Design in the Cerrado of Minas Gerais." She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Design at the Postgraduate Program in Design at the Federal University of Maranhão (PPGDg/UFMA), funded by CAPES, developing the research project "Sustainability with vegetable waste from the Amazon region of Maranhão" (2020), linked to the PROCAD Amazônia Notice No. 21/2018 - National Program for Academic Cooperation in the Amazon. She holds a specialization in Art Education from the Faculty of Education/UEMG and a Bachelor's degree in Environmental Design from the School of Design/UEMG. She is a tenured professor at the School of Design/UEMG, where she has taught since 1997. She has served as vice-coordinator of the School of Design's Memory Center (CDMEMO) since 2025, and as a collaborator at the Center for Studies in Design and Technology of the School of Design/UEMG (CEDTec), where she participated in the creation of the Librário Social Technology: Libras for All. She is a collaborator and researcher at the Latin American Center for Cultural Studies (CLAEC) and at NIDA – the research group Narratives in Innovation, Design and Anthropology at the Federal University of Maranhão (UFMA). She leads the CNPq Research Groups - Studies in Design, Communities, Social Technologies and Sustainable Initiatives (DECTESIS) and the research group Design, Identity and Territory/DIT. Provides management and consulting services in the development of handicrafts using plant-based materials, solidarity, socio-cultural and environmental projects, with experience in Local Productive Arrangements, Socio-creative Enterprises and projects in the areas of Environmental Design, Design for Sustainability, Social Design and Affective Design. Has experience in the field of Education, with an emphasis on Design, Sustainability and Inclusion, working mainly on the following themes: design, environment, social technologies, socio-cultural enterprises, communities, identity, culture, heritage and Interdisciplinarity.

Cover art for this issue of SDRJ magazine by Ana Luiza Braun.

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Published

2026-07-17

Issue

Vol. 18 No. 1 (2025): Jan-Jun

Section

Articles

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