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Inthis paper I investigate the multilayered interplay of modernism, nationalimaginaries and international entanglements in art and textile design in Peruin the first half of the 20th century. In this context, I focus onPeruvian female artist Elena Izcue (1889–1970), who played a decisive role inthe rediscovery and revaluation of pre-Columbian art through her works ofapplied arts and her appropriation of a symbolic repertoire, which was tobecome a central element within a collective visual universe. The context of artistic modernization as well as thesocial, political and cultural concept of Indigenism will serve as a foilagainst which I will propose to read Izcue’s works as a counter model ofIndigenism that suggests an alternative national aesthetic within the largerprocess of defining culture in modern Peru.Ona methodological level, these aspects will be analyzed in a larger contexttaking into consideration micro and macro levels of decolonization,postcoloniality and emancipatory identity politics. In regard to “nationalimaginaries” in Peru, this will also shed light on the complexity of theconcepts of nation and culture in view of a plurality of localities,temporalities and traditions of different ancient advanced civilizations as theMoche, Paracas or Nazca, as well as the colonial past and contemporarytransatlantic entanglements. In this framework, I also investigate the role oftextiles in relation to questions of nation-ness and identity through anexamination of the textile and fashion designs that Izcue produced in Paris andNew York. The aim is to renegotiate textile design as an artistic strategy froma postcolonial perspective which draws on discourses such as hybridity,exoticism and authenticity. As spaces of a “contact zone” (Pratt), theinterdependencies of textile design, “traveling fashion” (Karentzos) and artwill also be placed in the context of mobility, migration and transculturality.Melanie Vietmeier is a German Art Historian and Curator currently living in Nantes area, France. She studied Art History, British Cultural Studies and Economics at Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany, and University of Reading, Great Britain. In 2018, she finished her doctoral thesis on the woodcuts of Wassily Kandinsky in the context of Material Studies at Leuphana University Lüneburg. As a curatorial assistant, she has been involved in several exhibition projects at Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, and Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf. From June 2015 to March 2019, she was a member of the São Paulo-based research project “museum global” (2015–2017) and curated a microhistory on Brazilian modernism for the exhibition “museum global. Microhistories of an Ex-centric Modernism” at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (2018/19). Her current research interests include transcultural artistic practices and networks of encounter between Latin America and Europe in modern and contemporary art. 