Meet the Makers
Every basket, mask, and figure on woven.art is made by hand, by a named person, in a specific village. These are the Wounaan, Emberá, and Ticuna artists behind the work: master weavers, carvers, and painters from Panama, Colombia, and the Amazon.
Meet the Artists How We SourceThe Heart of Wounaan Weaving
Majé sits in the Darién, several hours by canoe and pickup from Panama City. Nine of our most active weavers live here. Some, like Sara and Fredy Jinguimia, are sisters; others, like Sobeida and Deyci Cabezón, share the village but not a household. Every basket on woven.art that says “Wounaan, Panama” was almost certainly woven by one of these hands.
Sara Jinguimia
Master Wounaan basket weaver from Majé. Signature feather motif in bold red and green. Sister of Fredy Jinguimia.
Fredy Jinguimia
Wounaan weaver from Majé. Sister of Sara. Pawprint, florals, geometric, and her own dye pots.
Argelida Donisabe
Wounaan master weaver of 35+ years. The only weaver we know who tucks a small grasshopper into her florals.
Mitkeila Teucama
Second-generation Wounaan weaver from Majé. Six hours a day at the coil, every fiber prepared by her own hand.
Lubecia Membache
Master Wounaan weaver of the pawprint motif. Splits her time between Majé and an artisan stall in Panama City.
Sobeida Cabezon Membache
Wounaan weaver from Majé, born 1984. Tiny stitches, geometric black and white: woven pointillism.
Yoli Jinguimia
Wounaan weaver from Majé, born 1984. Geometric patterns from age twelve. Part of the Jinguimia weaving family.
Deyci Cabezon
Wounaan weaver from Majé, born 1982. Geometric designs in classic black and white.
Milda Hasmaca
Wounaan weaver of magnified rose florals. Born in San Juan, Colombia; working between Majé and Chepo, Panama.
Sinai & Chepo: A Weaving Dynasty
The Negria family weaves across two villages, Sinai and Chepo, and across three generations. Cristina, Dalia, and Miriam are sisters and master weavers in their own right; Maricin is the next generation, daughter of Cristina, choosing between the loom and the lecture hall.
Cristina Negria Teucama
Master Wounaan weaver from Sinai. Best known for butterflies between wavy vertical palms; also parrots and macaws.
Dalia Negria
Master Wounaan weaver from Sinai. Pioneer of cocobolo black and pucham red dyes. Trained over 400 weavers.
Miriam Negria
Middle of the three Negria sisters, master weaver in Chepo, Panama. Weaves entirely from memory, with no sketch and no pattern on paper.
Maricin Cheucarama Negria
Young Wounaan weaver from Chepo, daughter of Cristina Negria. Now in university with plans to become a businesswoman.
Where Weaving Meets Carving
Aruza is a smaller Wounaan community where Eliria perfected her oval geometric form and Selerino built a reputation as one of Panama’s great Wounaan carvers in cocobolo and tagua.
Eliria Mepaquito
Wounaan weaver from Aruza, called la artista. Master of the oval geometric basket.
Selerino Cheucarama
Award-winning Wounaan carver of Aruza. Cocobolo, tagua, and the los guardienes guardians of the doorway.
Outside Panama City: One Lineage, Six Hands
A village closer to Panama City is home to six Jinguimia sisters, a separate branch of the family from the Majé Jinguimias. Whether all the Jinguimias are kin across villages isn’t fully documented, but the name carries skill wherever it appears.
Wounaan Voices Beyond the Village
Not every Wounaan story stays in the rainforest. Aulina was elected the first Cacica of the Wounaan nation in 2022; Plinio organizes from Ciudad Bolivar for displaced Wounaan communities. Both are essential to the story of contemporary Wounaan life.
Aulina Ismare Opua
Elected Cacica Wounaan in April 2022. One of few women in Panama to hold a national Indigenous leadership position.
Plinio Opua
Wounaan social leader and advocate for displaced communities, organizing from Ciudad Bolivar.
Papayo, Colombia
The Wounaan also live across the border in Colombia. Amalia weaves from the Papayo Reserve, cultivating her own palm and dyes, in a region many Colombian Wounaan have been displaced from over decades of conflict.
The Colombian Amazon
Far from the Darién, in the Colombian Amazon’s tri-border region, the Ticuna keep their own traditions alive. Angel paints the pucuna dolls central to the Pelazón ceremony, a coming-of-age rite the Ticuna have practiced for generations.
“Nothing here was made by a brand. Every piece you see was woven, carved, or painted by someone whose name we can tell you, in a village we can describe. This page is the rest of that sentence.”
Jen, RFB Woven Art