24 AN ALCHEMIST’S EXPERIMENTS OLGA DE AMARAL IN CONTEMPORARY ART Laura Mott Alchemy is often misunderstood as the sorcerous transformation of a common metal into gold, driven by a desire for wealth. Over thousands of years, however, the practice of alchemy included both practical and fantastical pursuits. Alchemists undertook experiments ranging from the invention of natural medicinal elixirs to the quest for immortality. Practicing in parallel to conventional scientific study, alchemists made contributions to the field that were often absorbed colloquially before later being named and formalized by academics. In the Victorian era, alchemy was expanded to incorporate philosophical inquiry that included the self-transformation of the practitioner. 1 The dynamism of an alchemist lies in the fervor for discovery. This figure coincides with our contemporary definition of the artist; for both, materials and their properties are often tested with metaphysical intention. The figure of the artist-alchemist is particularly appropriate for the Colombian artist Olga de Amaral. Gold has played a prominent visual role in her work since the early 1980s, especially in her prolific Alquimia (Alchemy) series (pp. 64–65, 75, 84–87, 105). With a Midas touch, she saturates gold atop structural textile terrains that radiate sheen and luminosity; in these works, she draws upon our primal attraction to its properties, a desire molded into currency and craftwork. Amaral credits her discovery of its artistic potential to the ceramist Lucie Rie’s use of Japanese kintsugi , the mending of broken pottery with gold. Scholars often trace Amaral’s work through the rich lineage of Pre-Columbian gold in Latin America due to her geographical context. However, Amaral’s true alchemist quality is in her approach to a practice defined by hypothesis. Her more than six decades of production demonstrate a sustained ingenuity within the field of fiber and craft, but her oeuvre is also punctuated with experimental works that defy this singular categorization. In the late 1960s and 1970s, Amaral undertook conceptual investigations into materiality and three-dimensional space that coincided with contemporaneous discourses in the expanding field of painting and