Project Review 2019 – ICPNA 2019 Contemporary Art Award Finalist

Finalist of the ICPNA Contemporary Art Prize 2019.

Title: Venus, I take from you and return to you.

Technique: Ceramics, Red clay pitcher, clay extracted from the soil of the Ucayali region burned high on a base of red clay extracted from the Ucayalino soil without firing.

Contextualization: This piece was made in parallel to the process of putting together my next individual show called Red Lady Dressed in Green, I will take references from the curatorial text that I wrote for this exhibition to explain this piece.

The Peruvian Amazon covers over 60% of our national territory, and under it, there is a red clay soil, which inspired the name of the city of Pucallpa. In Quechua: Puka Allpa; on Shipibo: May Ushin. I mean, ’Red Earth’.

This being my birthplace, it has forged since my childhood my dialogue with the earth, which revolves around the Amazon.

The pitcher has a special tradition in the world, associated with the collection and distribution of water for the community, a task assigned in many cultures to women and girls. The form I use is inspired by the shape of Shipibo-Konibo vessels with feminine characteristics. These make me think of the creation of the human being and especially the woman who in many local cultures is not only the distributor of water and food but also of culture and traditions.

The vessel also reminds me of the Venus of the ancient world and its strong color suggests courage and struggle, characteristics of the journey of the feminine being in history.

The earth, as an element of my work, has literally been collected from the ground, where generations of ancestors have taken steps. Just as it has been the place of roads that have seen terrorism, drug trafficking, murders, and disappearances, at the same time they have accompanied families, hopes, and progress.

For generations, the Amazon has been forgotten by the authorities and seen as an uninhabited green mass, without cultures, traditions, deficiencies, and needs. This discourse was reflected in school and university texts, in which the study of the most extensive territory of our country was in many cases absent.

The world has long taken this territory as a space of extraction and exploitation, similar to the female experience in the world.

Venus, I take from you, I return to you, we are born of a feminine being, from the earth, we develop, we look for ourselves, we find ourselves and we return to the place where we left. With the recording piece, this cycle carries the awareness of a specific context of the Peruvian Amazon that may be a reflection of other realities in the world.