Indigenous Knowledge and Women's Cosmetics: Mopa Mopa in the Colonial Northern Andes.

This article focuses on the discovery and significance of calomel (mercury(I) chloride) as a white pigment in seventeenth-century Indigenous northern Andean mopa mopa artworks, a resin-based decorative technique from southwestern Colombia. The use of calomel, identified for the first time in 2018 on mopa mopa objects, is argued to result from knowledge exchanges between Indigenous Andean artisans and European women, particularly within the colonial encomienda system where these groups interacted under unequal power dynamics. European women's familiarity with mercury-based compounds in cosmetics likely introduced calomel into mopa mopa practice, which combined Indigenous resin expertise with European materials and aesthetics. The article emphasizes how object-based analysis reveals subaltern networks of knowledge that have been historically overlooked, highlighting the complex cultural and technical interactions shaping early modern colonial art.