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How did Oswaldo Viteri use indigenous textile dolls to comment on institutional power?
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Latin American art
Detail from Popular History of Mexico, mosaic mural by Diego Rivera, 1953; on the Teatro des los Insurgentes, Mexico City.
In the 1970s, the Ecuadorian artist Oswaldo Viteri utilized tiny, brightly colored textile dolls purchased from highland indigenous populations to create assemblages on wooden boards. To comment on how institutional forces manipulate indigenous groups, Viteri selectively painted some of these dolls dark while leaving others untouched. He further emphasized this theme of control by arranging the dolls in specific patterns, sometimes regimenting them in orderly rows and at other times placing them randomly.1