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For over 100 years, Kuna Indian women and girls have sewn and worn the mola blouse as part of their dress ensemble. On the front and back of the blouses are mola panels, conceived and created as a pair. The pair of mola panels may be nearly identical or different. The relationship between a pair of mola panels is discussed in terms of the impact on the designs of Kuna culture and ethnoaesthetic criteria, especially layering, filler techniques, symmetry and colour preferences, as well as sewing techniques and material usage. Aspects of Kuna sociality, cosmology and verbal oratory are explored. In most cases it is possible to establish a thematic relationship between the back and front mola panels of a mola blouse. An object-based material culture approach contributes to an enhanced understanding of the complexities of mola making, including the technical skills required to design and manipulate layers of cloth. The importance of understanding mola panels as twinned pairs is highlighted by evaluating individual panels in pairs based on the examination of mola collections from six museums. This research also provides practical information for museum curators and others to establish which individual mola panels in collections may constitute a pair, originating from the same mola blouse.

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Keywords mola blouses Kuna Indian dress Pop Art Andy Warhol iconography appropriation diana MarKs Independent scholar Molas: displaying the quotidian before andy warhol abstract Mola blouses have become identified with both the Kuna Indians and the nation of Panama. The iconography on mola blouses has included images from North American and Latin American popular culture since the early twentieth century. This article explores the selection and display of images of consumer and popular culture by Kuna women with the later depiction of similar quotidian images in the early work of Andy Warhol.

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