The Lifelines of Color: Examining the Temporality of Dyeing Practice with Plants in the Northwest Amazon

The interest in biocolors as an opportunity to address current environmental challenges in dyeing processes has grown. However, the increasing demand for bio-based dyes can create tension between production rhythms and the regenerative capacity of local environments. Dominant discourses of time have influenced design practice, favoring production and consumption rhythms that follow a logic of acceleration and linearity to maximize efficiency and speed. In fashion and textiles, color follows seasonal changes under a logic of obsolescence and constant demand, due to the dominance of color trends in design practice. When working with biocolorants, design needs to attend to materials and ecologies while acknowledging a critical perspective on the temporalities of color-making. Research on biocolorants can benefit from examining craft practices in which the development of color becomes situated and involves a complex web of temporal relationships between the life processes of both dyers and the environment. This study examines the dyeing craft of The People of the Center in the Northwest Amazon. It investigates body and landscape relations from a temporal perspective, employing Tim Ingold’s notion of taskscape to comprehend the web of relations involved in a dyeing practice that is deeply entangled with the rhythms of the rainforest. This article focuses on the work of Kasia, a Bora craftsperson who works with chambira fibers and dyeing methods using plants that she collects and grows in her garden and chagra. This study employed a sensory ethnography methodology by following Kasia’s dyeing processes, including ethnographic interviews, participant observation, and active involvement in making color and inhabiting the rainforest. It pays attention to the embodied relations with the landscape when dyeing. The article examines the temporality of color-making and argues that biocolors emerge from the temporal relations between the dyer, the growth rhythms of plants, and the cycles of the landscape.