Labyrinth Mola Panel (before 1960): Art, History and Details

Labyrinth Mola Panel (before 1960) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This Labyrinth Mola Panel is executed in one of the most prestigious of Guna mola-making techniques. Known as bisu-bisu, it is a geometric maze of evenly spaced lines that create winding paths across the surface and visually dissolve the divide between figure and ground.

Object facts

• Title: Labyrinth Mola Panel
• Date: before 1960
• Culture: Republic of Panamá, Gunayala Comarca, Guna people
• Type: Garment
• Technique: Cotton; reverse appliqué, appliqué
• Dimensions: Overall: 42 x 53 cm (16 9/16 x 20 7/8 in.)
• Collection: Textiles
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 2021.153

A detail from the museum

Panels like this one originally were sewn into blouses known as molas.

Collection credit

Gift of Howard A. Aronson

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.