This essay by art historian Gabriela Germana Roquez delves into the significance of landscape in the art of the Sarhua community in the Peruvian Andes and the Shipibo-Konibo people in the Amazon. Through her analysis, Germana Roquez illuminates how these artworks depict, embody, and summon the landscape, emphasizing the active role of the natural world in the artists’ creative process. By exploring the interconnectedness of humans and nonhuman actors in artistic expression, Germana Roquez prompts us to reflect on the spiritual dimensions of representing the natural environment, drawing from both rural and urban contexts in Peru as case studies.

The modern Western concept of landscape has traditionally implied the existence of an observing subject and an observed territory. It corresponds to an anthropocentric perspective, in which humans are superior to nature and thus allowed to control the territory and extract its resources. In the arts, this understanding has conventionally meant the depiction of an expanse of natural scenery from a single, detached viewpoint. While artists in recent decades have proposed diverging manners of representing the landscape (or the territory that surrounds them), new critical studies and theories have posed other ways in which it can be analyzed.¹The development of ecocriticism and new materialisms has been particularly instrumental in questioning the centrality of humans in ecological contexts and in highlighting the agency of nonhuman elements.²

However, as Jessica Horton, Janet Catherine Berlo, and Sara Garzón have all noted, we must acknowledge that these seemingly new ideas in fact originated among Indigenous groups and have been a constant presence in their millenarian thought.³ Further, Indigenous artworks that reference the natural environment offer alternative thought models.⁴To understand Indigenous perspectives on the notion of territory, we must engage with diverse Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies. One important subject among many Indigenous groups is the concept of vital materiality and the interconnections between different beings and elements on earth. Indigenous and rural communities in the Andean and Amazonian regions of South America perceive that all entities in nature are interdependent, and yet that each one possesses agency and intentionality all its own. Moreover, many of these elements hold sacred significance.

Building upon Indigenous ecologies and materialisms, this text addresses the ways in which people from the rural communities of Sarhua in the Andes and Shipibo-Konibo in the Amazonia comprehend the material world that surrounds them and how this understanding guides their aesthetic production. First, I analyze painted boards produced in Sarhua and Shipibo-Konibo textiles. I argue that these objects are “embodied landscapes” interacting with human and nonhuman elements that define their material, formal, and iconographic configurations in both sacred and nonsacred ways. Next, I analyze a series of paintings created by contemporary Sarhuino and Shipibo-Konibo artists who have relocated (or whose parents relocated) to the capital city of Lima. This inquiry illustrates how these artists, while adhering to many traditional Western painterly conventions—particularly the use of representational images, cartographic renditions, and the landscape as the background or setting for human activities—are still able to evoke the natural environment from the sacred and animistic perspectives that they inherited from their communities.

Painted Boards and the Power of the Mountains

Sarhua is a rural community located in the Ayacucho region of the Peruvian central Andes. Sarhuinos inhabit a small town in a valley surrounded by big mountains, and they use the adjacent lands for agriculture and livestock labor. Among the community’s most important symbolic objects are the Tablas, long painted boards that date as far back as the 19th century. About 118 inches high and 12 inches wide, they are normally attached to the ceiling of a newly constructed house.

Their main functions are to represent kinship relations and to maintain systems of reciprocity within the community.⁵But Tablas also protect the house and the family that lives in it, together with their lands, animals, crops, goods, and chattels. People in Sarhua, as in other Andean regions, consider the mountains, known as the apus or wamanis, to be agentic, powerful beings.⁶I pose that the Tablas care for the houses in the same way that the apus care for the town. Both the materiality and iconography of the Tablas and their participation in ritual are central to this analysis.

Sarhuinos make the Tablas when a couple is constructing the roof of their new house. The Tablas are read from bottom to top, beginning with a dedication from the compadres,⁷followed by depictions of the Virgin of the Assumption, the patron saint of Sarhua; the couple who owns the house; their close relatives (who appear in order of importance); and the sun.

Sarhuinos obtain the wood to make the Tablas from various trees, including pati, aliso, or molle, all of which grow in the valleys near the town, and use the burned branches of chillka, or willow, also from the valley, to outline the figures. They obtain the colored earths used to paint the figures from the mountains that surround Sarhua. To apply the colors, painters use retama sticks and feathers from local birds, and to fix the colors, they use qullpa, a type of resin they obtain from rocks located in the highlands.⁸ Indeed, the materials necessary to produce the Tablas come from the whole of the Sarhuino landscape. Native American curator Patricia Marroquín Norby has pointed out that in many works of Indigenous art, the source of the materials, the way in which they are collected, and their treatment speak to the relationship between the inhabitants and their territory. These works, therefore, do not represent the landscape; rather, they are the landscape.⁹

When the Tabla is ready, the compadre delivers it to the new homeowners in a ritual called Tabla Apaycuy. He and his wife, family, and friends, together with other local residents, carry the Tabla through the town of Sarhua along with goods such as corn, potatoes, fruits, and ichu, a grass from the highlands that is used for roofing.¹⁰Through the Tabla Apaykuy, the Tabla interacts with the entire Sarhuino landscape. More importantly, after the owners of the house attach the Tabla to the ceiling and celebrate with a great party, the Tabla gets in touch with the apus through a ritual called inchahuay, thereby acquiring the power to protect the house. During the inchahuay, guests walk and dance around the outside of the house wearing cloaks and conical hats made of ichu. Sarhuino painter Primitivo Evanán Poma indicates that through this practice, people invoke the apus for the protection of the house.¹¹Anthropologist Hilda Araujo points out that inchahuay is also the Sarhuino name for a layer of fog that, when it settles on the mountains on August 1, indicates a good year—that is, a year with a lot of rain. Thus, when the Sarhuinos wear these conical hats, they act as “mountains of good luck.”¹²

According to Andean concepts of animism, places and things are sentient entities that have the power to act. Further, as Bill Sillar notes, “Things that have had prior relationship, or evoke similarities, with other places, things or people may continue to have an effective relationship with their origin or referent.”¹³The Tablas de Sarhua, in fact, act like the apus or wamanis. Through their images and materiality, they are connected to and interact with the context surrounding them and have the agency to take care of the house and family, their goods, and their lands.

Shipibo-Konibo Textiles and the Power of Plants

The Shipibo-Konibo, an Indigenous community living in rural towns along the Ucayali River, in the Peruvian Amazon, have a different understanding of their territory and its visual representation in everyday objects. The Shipibo-Konibo consider themselves part of nature and the forest, trees, rivers, and land as entities with agency. Essential to the Shipibo-Konibo culture are the rao plants, or plants with power, which they consider to be intelligent beings.¹⁴Through ritual consumption of these plants, the Shipibo-Konibo connect with them and use them for medicinal purposes. They also use rao plants to guide them through their inner selves and to experience a deep communion with nature.¹⁵

Inspired by the visions formed when using rao plants such as piripiri (Cyperus sp.) and ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi), Shipibo-Konibo women create and apply geometric patterns to bodies, clothing, ceramics, and other objects, materializing the koshi, or positive energy of the plants.¹⁶

Called kené in the Shipibo-Konibo language, these visual designs allude to the spots on the skin of the primordial anaconda ronin, who created the rivers and constellations as well as the paths that beings (animals, plants, spirits, and stars) use to travel and communicate.¹⁷Similar to interconnected labyrinths, they represent the river and the constellations that are central to the community’s worldview.¹⁸The Shipibo-Konibo’s understanding of the territory takes place through ritual and connection with the energy of plants, linking the territory with the cosmos and with human beings and their daily activities.

Among the objects that Shipibo-Konibo women cover with kené is the cloth they use to make traditional garments, such as the chitonte, or skirt for women, and the tari, or tunic for men. They construct these clothes from plain-weave fabrics made of a native variety of cotton that grows in the Ucayali region. Women used to grow the cotton, spin it, and weave it with a backstrap loom.¹⁹Once they have the cloth ready, they paint the kené using vegetal dyes that they make from the bark, fruits, leaves, roots, and seeds of local plants.²⁰Then they cover the cloth with gray clay sourced from the river’s edge and dry it in the sun. When they wash the cloth, the once pale designs are shown to have turned black and colorfast. Sometimes the women add bits of color derived from plants—such as red from achiote, yellow from the roots of the guisador, and purple from the ani plant.²¹ In other cases, they completely dye the new cloth using the bark of the mahogany tree to achieve a reddish tone or river clay, which results in a black fabric they then embellish with colorful embroidery and applied white strips.²²

As in the case of Tablas, Shipibo-Konibo textiles evoke the territory. This territory is not an alien space, as it is intrinsically linked to the body of the person who wears the garment made from the cloth created within it. The materiality of the clothing links the human body to local plants, water, and soil; and the patterns link it to networks—to the roots of plants, the paths of rivers, and the movement of stars.²³Moreover, the energy of the rao plants protects those wearing the clothing from various evils. The whole garment is testimony to a worldview in which the body is directly linked to nature and the territory on both cosmic and intimate levels.

Transitioning to a New Environment

During the second half of the twentieth century, when economic and social crises heavily affected rural regions in Peru, many people living in those areas had to migrate to the big cities, especially to the capital, Lima. There, migrants had to reshape their lives, fight for income and basic rights, learn Spanish, and negotiate the power structures in place. In the same way, they had to reshape their artistic practices to fit the market and the art system and to communicate with an urban audience.²⁴ In the 1970s, a group of Sarhuino painters in Lima began to produce smaller versions of the traditional Tablas and to depict costumbrista scenes of Sarhua for an urban audience. The new Tablas were a success, leading Sarhuinos to also depict social injustices and personal concerns.²⁵Shipibo-Konibo art followed a similar transition. Some of the Shipibo-Konibo who migrated to Lima in the 1980s shared the traditional knowledge of their people through figurative images describing traditional practices and rituals as well as their worldview and, more recently, their political struggles.²⁶In these new paintings, both Sarhuino and Shipibo-Konibo artists adopted Western conventions, transforming their engagement with the landscape. Although intended for other audiences and purposes, many of these pieces managed to refer in novel, clever, and creative ways, to the landscape from the perspective of Indigenous Andean and Amazonian ontologies and epistemologies.

The mountains form the background of many Sarhuino paintings produced in Lima—that is, they are shown as part of the landscape in the Western sense. Some painters, however, have taken an interest in evoking the agency, power, and sacredness of the apus. Since the 1970s, the painters of the Asociación de Artistas Populares de Sarhua (ADAPS) have made several versions of Apu Suyos.

All of them feature the mountains of Sarhua, but in the form of men dressed in regal clothes. According to the inscription on the painting, the apus in the composition eat the offerings (fruits, wine, special bread, coca leaves, cigarettes, flowers, etc.) that the Sarhuinos have left for them on the table after a herranza, or cattle-marking celebration. A central figure, Millqa, receives the products, and invites the other apus to enjoy these “exquisite offerings.” All of them agree to protect the trusted sheep cattle.²⁷This portrayal of the Sarhuino landscape conveys the agency and power of the mountains to an urban audience, which is why the painters decided to use Western conventions and render the apus as human beings dressed like European kings.²⁸

In 1997, Carmelón Berrocal made Mapa del distrito de Sarhua con casitas, in which he represents the territory of his native town based on modern Western cartographic conventions.²⁹

However, this work exceeds the standard models based on precise measurements and instead highlights important places and elements for Sarhuinos—mountains, farmlands, roads, streets, chapels, canals, and rivers—whose proper names are indicated in writing. Also, the urban area is subjugated by the colossal mountains and the starry sky. This map, therefore, not only represents a territory, but also accounts for the power of the apus and nature over the life and culture of the Sarhuinos. Furthermore, Berrocal made the painting with colored soils collected from Sarhua. The painting is an intellectual depiction of the territory and yet also connected to it through its materiality.

In 2023, Venuca Evanán, the daughter of two Sarhuino painters who had relocated to Lima, produced La ofrenda de Francisca.

The composition of this work centers on the artist’s grandmother, Francisca, who is making a pagapu, or offering to the mountains, and giving thanks to the Pachamama, or the earth, for all that she offers. The four mountains in the background represent the four apus of Sarhua, which is Francisca’s hometown. In the foreground, Venuca has depicted the sea and coastal region where Lima is located and where she was born. The elements shown reference the relationship between humans and other natural beings as well as the migration story of the artist’s family. By including colored soils that she sourced from the mountains in Sarhua and sand that she collected from her neighborhood in Lima, Venuca reinforces this aspect of the artwork.³⁰

For Shipibo-Konibo people, the kené, the geometric designs that women visualize when connecting with rao plants, have been a means of reference to the context surrounding them, together with the concepts and knowledge to navigate it. Elena Valera (Bahuan Jisbe), born in the community of Roya, Pucallpa, learned kené from her grandmother and has applied it to both textiles and ceramics.³¹In Lima, she created her firsts paintings with materials and techniques like the ones she used before moving to the capital. First, she dyed the fabric with mahogany bark to obtain a reddish background, and then she painted the images with natural pigments she obtained from mud, plants, and soil from Roya.³²Onanya Baque Raoni (1990s) portrays an onanya, or traditional healer, who is using rao plants to cure a sick child and their mother.³³

Valera, who is also a traditional healer, speaks on different levels of the centrality of plants and their power in the Shipibo-Konibo worldview through the theme of onanya, the inclusion of kené designs in her subjects’ clothing, and her use of plants as a primary material.

Eventually Valera stopped using natural dyes and began painting with acrylic on cloth. She also began depicting the migration of the Shipibo-Konibo people to Lima. In a 2011 painting, the artist addresses the natural environment of the Amazon Forest and the Andean mountains that the Shipibo-Konibo must cross to get to the Peruvian capital.

These places are rendered as interrelated environments, though some important differences stand out. While in the Amazon Forest, everything seems to work in perfect harmony, especially the relationship between women and plants, in Lima all the elements—three Shipibo women, a computer, the San Cristóbal mountain, and the tall buildings—are disconnected from one another. In this complex environment, while two Shipibo women learn new skills to succeed in an industrialized and globalized world, a third woman, dressed in traditional Shipibo-Konibo clothing, represents the connection to knowledge that their mothers and grandmothers learned from plants and transmitted through kené.³⁴

Harry Pinedo, son of Elena Valera and born in Lima, is also an artist. His painting El apu y la danza de Ronin (2022), characteristic of his work about the migration of the Shipibo-Konibo to Lima, shows two men and a woman performing a dance in honor of Ronin on the streets of the Shipibo-Konibo community of Cantagallo in Lima.³⁵

Ronin is the mother serpent of waters, a primordial being who gave rise to the universe and whose skin is the basis of the kené designs.³⁶The Ronin dance and the presence of kené on the people’s clothing and the floor celebrate the harmony of the Shipibo-Konibo world. The San Cristóbal mountain, the main apu of the Lima area, a powerful being before the Spanish invasion and a sacred Indigenous space today reconquered by the Shipibo-Konibo, stands in the background.³⁷ Two big trees, located on either side of the mountain, are also prominent elements in the composition, highlighting the power and importance of plants to the Shipibo-Community in Lima.

These works question the Western anthropocentric conception of the landscape and allow us to conceive new understandings of landscape and territory. Indigenous ecologies and materialisms, therefore, constitute an effective approach to analyzing them. Produced in different contexts, however, they must also be analyzed on their own terms. Elizabeth Burns Coleman points out, in regards to Indigenous art, the importance of knowing “the kind of broad categories that are established in the society in which it [the object] was produced, as well as the category in which the artist that produced the work expected it to be understood or interpreted.”³⁸Sarhuino and Shipibo-Konibo people living in their rural communities are especially concerned with the vitality of matter and the interconnection of different beings in nature. They do not produce objects that represent the landscape or territory around them. Instead, these communities create, in collaboration with mountains and plants, acting entities that interact with their immediate contexts. Sarhuino and Shipibo-Konibo contemporary artworks made in Lima are no longer sentient given that they are made for urban, Western audiences. The artists have conveyed, through images, the power of the mountains and plants and their relationships with other beings. However, by using strategies such as representing natural beings with human traits and incorporating material elements from the natural environment and symbolic references to the knowledge of their respective communities, these artworks continue to be powerful objects that never cease to negotiate their Indigenous epistemologies.

Spanish

El presente ensayo de la historiadora de arte Gabriela Germana Roquez explora la importancia del paisaje en el arte de la comunidad Sarhua en los Andes y del pueblo shipibo-konibo en la Amazonia, ambos en Perú. En su análisis, Germana Roquez nos muestra el modo en que estas obras de arte representan, encarnan y reivindican el paisaje, destacando el papel activo que el mundo natural desempeña en el proceso creativo de los artistas. Al explorar la interconexión de los actores humanos y no humanos en la expresión artística, Germana Roquez nos invita a reflexionar sobre las dimensiones espirituales de la representación del entorno natural, tomando como casos de estudio tanto contextos rurales como urbanos de Perú.

El concepto occidental moderno de paisaje tradicionalmente ha supuesto la existencia de un sujeto observador y de un territorio observado. Esto responde a una perspectiva antropocéntrica, según la cual los seres humanos son superiores a la naturaleza y, por tanto, pueden controlar el territorio y extraer sus recursos. En el mundo del arte, este concepto generalmente ha llevado a representar la extensión del paisaje natural desde un punto de vista individual y distante. En las últimas décadas, mientras los artistas han propuesto diversas formas de representar el paisaje (o el territorio que les rodea), los nuevos estudios y teorías críticas han planteado también otras maneras de analizarlo.³⁹Tanto el desarrollo de la ecocrítica como del nuevo materialismo han sido particularmente decisivos a la hora de cuestionar la centralidad del ser humano en el contexto ecológico y de resaltar la agencia de los elementos no humanos.⁴⁰

Sin embargo, como han señalado Jessica Horton, Janet Catherine Berlo y Sara Garzón, debemos reconocer que estas ideas aparentemente nuevas en verdad surgieron en los grupos indígenas y han sido una presencia constante en su pensamiento milenario.⁴¹ Más aún, las obras de arte indígena que hacen referencia al entorno natural proponen estructuras de pensamiento alternativas.⁴² Para comprender la noción de territorio desde las perspectivas indígenas, tenemos que abordar diferentes epistemologías y ontologías indígenas. Un tema muy importante para los diversos grupos indígenas es el concepto de materialidad vital y la interconexión entre los distintos seres y elementos de la Tierra. Las comunidades indígenas y rurales de las regiones andina y amazónica de América del Sur consideran que, en la naturaleza, todas las entidades son interdependientes y, sin embargo, cada una posee agencia e intencionalidad propia. Es más, muchos de estos elementos revisten un valor sagrado.

Basándose en las ecologías y los materialismos indígenas, el presente texto explora el modo en que los habitantes de las comunidades rurales de Sarhua, en los Andes, y shipibo-konibo, en la Amazonia, conciben el mundo material que les rodea y cómo esa concepción guía su producción estética. En primer lugar, analizaré las tablas pintadas que se elaboran en Sarhua y los tejidos shipibo-konibo. Propongo que estos objetos son “paisajes encarnados” que interactúan con los elementos humanos y no humanos que definen sus configuraciones materiales, formales e iconográficas, tanto a nivel sagrado como no sagrado. Luego examinaré una serie de pinturas creadas por artistas sarhuinos y shipibo-konibo contemporáneos que se han trasladado (o cuyos padres se han trasladado) a la capital, Lima. Este análisis mostrará cómo estos artistas, aunque se han adherido a diferentes convenciones pictóricas occidentales tradicionales –en particular, al uso de imágenes figurativas, de reproducciones cartográficas y del paisaje como fondo o escenario de la actividad humana– siguen siendo capaces de invocar el entorno natural desde las perspectivas sagradas y animistas que heredaron de sus comunidades.

Las tablas pintadas y el poder de las montañas

Sarhua es una comunidad rural situada en la región de Ayacucho, en los Andes peruanos centrales. Los sarhuinos habitan un pequeño poblado en un valle rodeado por grandes montañas, y usan los terrenos aledaños para labores agrícolas y ganaderas. Las Tablas –largos listones de madera pintada que datan del siglo XIX– se encuentran entre los objetos simbólicos más importantes de la comunidad. Miden unos tres metros de alto por treinta centímetros de ancho, y normalmente se colocan en los techos de las casas recién construidas.

Su principal función es representar las relaciones de parentesco y mantener los sistemas de reciprocidad dentro de la comunidad. ⁴³Pero las Tablas también protegen la casa y a la familia que la habita, junto con sus tierras, animales, cultivos, bienes y enseres. La gente de Sarhua, igual que en otras regiones andinas, considera a las montañas –a las que llaman apus o wamanis– como seres poderosos y con agencia.⁴⁴ Planteo, por lo tanto, que las Tablas cuidan las casas de la misma manera que los apus cuidan el pueblo. Tanto la materialidad como la iconografía de las Tablas y su participación en los rituales son fundamentales para este análisis.

            Los sarhuinos hacen Tablas cada vez que una pareja empieza a construir el techo de una nueva casa. Las Tablas se leen de abajo hacia arriba, comenzando con una dedicatoria de los compadres,⁴⁵ seguida de representaciones de la Virgen de la Asunción (patrona de Sarhua), de la pareja propietaria de la casa, de sus parientes cercanos (que aparecen en orden de importancia) y del sol.

Los sarhuinos obtienen la madera para hacer las Tablas de distintos árboles –entre ellos el pati, el aliso o el molle– que crecen en los valles cercanos al pueblo, y usan las ramas quemadas de chillka o sauce, también provenientes del valle, para delinear las figuras. Las tierras de colores que usan para pintar las figuras las obtienen de las montañas que rodean Sarhua. Para aplicar los colores, los pintores usan varas de retama y plumas de aves locales, y para fijarlos, aplican qullpa, un tipo de resina que obtienen de piedras ubicadas en las zonas de más altura.⁴⁶ Así, todos los materiales necesarios para producir las Tablas proceden del paisaje sarhuino. La curadora de arte indígena Patricia Marroquín Norby ha señalado que, en muchas obras de arte indígena, el origen de los materiales, la forma en que son recolectados y el tratamiento que reciben reflejan la relación de los habitantes con su territorio. Por tanto, estas obras no representan el paisaje, sino que son el paisaje.⁴⁷

Cuando la Tabla está lista, el compadre se la entrega a los nuevos propietarios en un ritual llamado Tabla Apaycuy. El compadre y su esposa, familia y amigos, acompañados de otros residentes locales, transportan la Tabla a través del pueblo de Sarhua junto con otras mercancías como maíz, papas, frutas e ichu, una hierba de las tierras altas que se utiliza para techar.⁴⁸Mediante la ceremonia del Tabla Apaykuy, la Tabla interactúa con todo el paisaje sarhuino. Y lo que es más importante, luego de que los dueños fijan la Tabla al techo de la casa y celebran con una gran fiesta, la Tabla entra en contacto con los apus a través de un ritual llamado inchahuay, donde adquiere el poder de proteger la casa.⁴⁹Durante el inchahuay, los invitados pasean y bailan alrededor de la casa con capas y sombreros cónicos hechos de ichu. El pintor sarhuino Primitivo Evanán Poma afirma que, mediante este ritual, la gente invoca a los apus para que protejan la casa. La antropóloga Hilda Araujo explica que la palabra inchahuay también es el término sarhuino que se usa para designar una fina capa de niebla que, si se asienta en las montañas el 1 de agosto, es señal de que vendrá un buen año, es decir, un año con abundantes lluvias. Así, cuando los sarhuinos usan esos sombreros cónicos, están actuando como “montañas de buena suerte”.⁵⁰

Según las concepciones andinas de animismo, los lugares y las cosas son entidades sensibles que tienen poder para actuar. Es más, como señala Bill Sillar, “las cosas que han tenido una relación previa o que suscitan similitudes con otros lugares, cosas o personas pueden seguir manteniendo una relación efectiva con su origen o su referente”.⁵¹ Las Tablas de Sarhua, de hecho, actúan como apus o wamanis. A través de sus imágenes y de su materialidad, están conectadas e interactúan con el contexto que las rodea, y tienen agencia para cuidar de la casa y de la familia, de sus bienes y sus tierras.

Los textiles shipibo-konibo y el poder de las plantas

Los shipibo-konibo, una comunidad indígena que habita en pueblos rurales a lo largo del río Ucayali en la Amazonia peruana, tienen una forma distinta de entender el territorio y su representación visual en los objetos cotidianos. Los shipibo-konibo se consideran parte de la naturaleza y ven el bosque, los árboles, los ríos y la tierra como entidades con agencia. Las plantas rao, o plantas con poder, son fundamentales para ellos y las consideran seres inteligentes.⁵²A través del consumo ritual de estas plantas, los shipibo-konibo entablan una conexión con ellas y las utilizan con fines medicinales. También recurren a las plantas rao para que éstas los guíen por su interior y experimentar una profunda comunión con la naturaleza.⁵³ Inspiradas en las visiones que perciben cuando consumen plantas rao como el piripiri (Cyperus sp.) y la ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi), las mujeres shipibo-konibo crean y plasman motivos geométricos en sus cuerpos, ropas, cerámicas y otros objetos, materializando la koshi o energía positiva de las plantas.⁵⁴

Estos diseños visuales, denominados kené en el idioma shipibo-konibo, evocan las manchas de la piel de la anaconda primigenia ronin, quien creó los ríos y las constelaciones, así como los caminos que utilizan los seres vivos (animales, plantas, espíritus y estrellas) para trasladarse y comunicarse.⁵⁵Similares a laberintos conectados entre sí, representan tanto el río como las constelaciones que son fundamentales para la cosmovisión de la comunidad.⁵⁶ A través del ritual y de la conexión con la energía de las plantas, los shipibo-konibo comprenden el territorio y lo vinculan al cosmos y a los seres humanos y sus actividades cotidianas.   

Entre los objetos que las mujeres shipibo-konibo cubren con kené destaca la tela que usan para confeccionar prendas tradicionales, como el chitonte, o falda para las mujeres, y el tari, o túnica para los hombres. Confeccionan estas prendas con telas de tejido liso realizadas a partir de una variedad autóctona de algodón que crece en la región de Ucayali. Las mujeres solían cultivar el algodón, hilarlo y tejerlo con un telar de cintura.⁵⁷Cuando la tela ya está lista, pintan el kené con tintes vegetales que elaboran con cortezas, frutos, hojas, raíces y semillas de plantas locales.⁵⁸Luego cubren la tela con arcilla gris procedente de la orilla del río y la secan al sol. Cuando la lavan, los diseños que eran pálidos se oscurecen y se fijan a la tela. A veces las mujeres añaden toques de colores derivados de plantas, como el rojo del achiote, el amarillo de las raíces del guisador y el púrpura de la planta ani.⁵⁹En otros casos, tiñen completamente la tela nueva utilizando la corteza del árbol de caoba para conseguir un tono rojizo o arcilla del río, lo que da como resultado un tejido negro que luego adornan con bordados de colores y apliques de tiras blancas.⁶⁰

Al igual que en el caso de las Tablas, los tejidos shipibo-konibo evocan al territorio. Este territorio no es un espacio ajeno, sino que está intrínsecamente unido al cuerpo de la persona que usa la prenda elaborada con la tela que se fabricó en él. La materialidad de la prenda conecta el cuerpo humano a las plantas, al agua y al suelo del lugar; y los diseños lo conectan a otros entramados: a las raíces de las plantas, a los caminos de los ríos y al movimiento de las estrellas.⁶¹ Además, la energía de las plantas rao protege a quien lleva la ropa de distintos males. Toda la prenda es el testimonio de una cosmovisión en la que el cuerpo está directamente unido a la naturaleza y al territorio, tanto a nivel cósmico como íntimo.

La transición a un nuevo entorno

Durante la segunda mitad del siglo XX, una serie de crisis económicas y sociales afectaron gravemente a las regiones rurales de Perú y muchas personas tuvieron que migrar a las grandes ciudades, sobre todo a la capital, Lima. Allí, los migrantes tuvieron que rehacer sus vidas, luchar por conseguir ingresos y derechos básicos, aprender español y negociar las estructuras de poder existentes. También debieron reconfigurar sus prácticas artísticas para adaptarse al mercado y al sistema del arte, y para aprender a comunicarse con un público urbano.⁶²

En la década de 1970, un grupo de pintores sarhuinos en Lima empezó a producir versiones más pequeñas de las tradicionales Tablas y a representar en ellas escenas costumbristas de Sarhua orientadas a un público urbano. Las nuevas Tablas fueron un éxito, lo que llevó a los sarhuinos a representar también las injusticias sociales y sus preocupaciones personales.⁶³ El arte shipibo-konibo siguió una transición parecida. Algunos de los shipibo-konibo que emigraron a Lima en la década de 1980 mostraron los conocimientos de su pueblo mediante imágenes figurativas que describían prácticas y rituales tradicionales, así como su cosmovisión y, más recientemente, sus luchas políticas.⁶⁴En estas nuevas pinturas, tanto los artistas sarhuinos como los shipibo-konibo adoptaron convenciones occidentales, lo que supuso una modificación en su relación con el paisaje. Si bien estas piezas fueron pensadas para otros públicos y con otros propósitos, muchas supieron referirse al paisaje de forma novedosa, inteligente y creativa, desde la perspectiva de las ontologías y epistemologías indígenas andinas y amazónicas. 

Las montañas son parte del fondo de muchos cuadros sarhuinos realizados en Lima, es decir, se las presenta como parte del paisaje en el sentido occidental. Sin embargo, algunos pintores se han esforzado por evocar la agencia, el poder y el carácter sagrado de los apus. Desde la década de 1970, los pintores de la Asociación de Artistas Populares de Sarhua (ADAPS) han realizado varias versiones de Apu Suyos.

En todas se pueden ver las montañas de Sarhua, pero personificadas como hombres vestidos con ropas de la realeza. Según la inscripción en la pintura, los apus de la composición comen las ofrendas (frutas, vino, pan especial, hojas de coca, cigarrillos, flores, etc.) que los sarhuinos les han dejado sobre la mesa después de la herranza o fiesta de marcación de ganado. Una de las figuras centrales, Millqa, recibe los productos e invita a los demás apus a disfrutar de estas “exquisitas ofrendas”. Todos se ponen de acuerdo para proteger el ganado ovino de los leales.⁶⁵Esta representación del paisaje sarhuino busca transmitir la agencia y el poder de las montañas a un público urbano, razón por la cual los pintores decidieron utilizar las convenciones occidentales y representar a los apus como seres humanos vestidos como reyes europeos.⁶⁶En 1997, Carmelón Berrocal hizo el cuadro Mapa del distrito de Sarhua con casitas, en el que representa el territorio de su pueblo natal según las convenciones cartográficas occidentales modernas.⁶⁷

Esta obra, sin embargo, excede los diseños estándares basados en mediciones precisas y destaca, en su lugar, los espacios y elementos importantes para los Sarhuinos –las montañas, las tierras de cultivo, los caminos, las calles, las capillas, los canales y ríos– cuyos nombres propios aparecen indicados por escrito. Además, el casco urbano se presenta dominado por las colosales montañas y el cielo estrellado. Este mapa, por tanto, no sólo representa un territorio, sino que también da cuenta del poder de los apus y de la naturaleza sobre la vida y la cultura de los sarhuinos. Más aún, Berrocal pintó el cuadro con tierras de colores recogidas en Sarhua. El cuadro es una representación intelectual del territorio, pero además está conectado a él por su materialidad.   

En 2023, Venuca Evanán, hija de dos pintores sarhuinos que tuvieron que reestablecerse en Lima, pintó La ofrenda de Francisca.

La composición gira en torno a la abuela de la artista, Francisca, quien realiza un pagapu u ofrenda a las montañas y da gracias a la Pachamama, o tierra, por todo lo que nos ofrece. Las cuatro montañas del fondo representan los cuatro apus de Sarhua, ciudad natal de Francisca. En primer plano, Venuca representó el mar y la región costera en que se encuentra Lima y donde ella nació. Los elementos representados remiten al vínculo entre los seres humanos y otros seres naturales, así como a la historia de migración de la familia de la artista. Venuca subraya este aspecto de la obra incluyendo tierras de colores que obtuvo en las montañas de Sarhua y arena que recogió en su barrio de Lima.⁶⁸

Para el pueblo shipibo-konibo, el kené –los diseños geométricos que las mujeres visualizan cuando se conectan con las plantas rao– ha sido el medio para referirse al contexto que les rodea, así como a los conceptos y conocimientos necesarios para desenvolverse en él. Elena Valera (Bahuan Jisbe), nacida en la comunidad de Roya (Pucallpa) aprendió el kené de su abuela y lo ha aplicado tanto en textiles como en cerámica.⁶⁹En Lima creó sus primeras pinturas con materiales y técnicas similares a las que utilizaba antes de trasladarse a la capital. Primero, teñía las telas con corteza de caoba para obtener un fondo rojizo, y luego pintaba las imágenes con pigmentos naturales que obtuvo del barro, las plantas y la tierra de Roya.⁷⁰Onanya Baque Raoni (década de 1990) retrata a un onanya, o curandero tradicional, que utiliza plantas rao para curar a un niño enfermo y a su madre.⁷¹

Valera, que también es curandera tradicional, plantea en distintos niveles la centralidad de las plantas y su poder en la cosmovisión shipibo-konibo, a través de la figura del onanya, la inclusión de diseños kené en la ropa de sus personajes y el uso de las plantas como materia primordial.

Con el tiempo, Valera dejó de utilizar tintes naturales y empezó a pintar con acrílico sobre tela. También comenzó a representar la migración del pueblo shipibo-konibo a Lima. En un cuadro de 2011 la artista retrata el entorno natural de la selva amazónica y las montañas andinas que los shipibo-konibo deben atravesar para llegar a la capital peruana.

Estos lugares están representados como entornos que se relacionan entre sí, pero se pueden ver ciertas diferencias importantes. Mientras que en la selva amazónica parece que todo convive en perfecta armonía, en especial la relación entre las mujeres y las plantas, en Lima todos los elementos –las tres mujeres shipibo, la computadora, el cerro San Cristóbal y los altos edificios– están desconectados entre sí. En este complejo entorno, mientras dos mujeres shipibo aprenden nuevas habilidades para triunfar en un mundo industrializado y globalizado, una tercera mujer, vestida con prendas tradicionales shipibo-konibo, simboliza la conexión con los conocimientos que sus madres y abuelas aprendieron de las plantas y transmitieron a través del kené.⁷²

Harry Pinedo, hijo de Elena Valera y nacido en Lima, también es artista. Su cuadro El apu y la danza de ronin (2022), característico de su obra sobre la migración de los shipibo-konibo a Lima, muestra a dos hombres y una mujer ejecutando una danza en honor a ronin en las calles de la comunidad shipibo-konibo de Cantagallo, en Lima.⁷³

Ronin es la serpiente madre de las aguas, un ser primigenio que dio origen al universo y cuya piel es la base de los diseños kené.⁷⁴La danza de ronin y la presencia del kené en la vestimenta de la gente y en el suelo, celebran la armonía del mundo shipibo-konibo. Al fondo se alza el cerro San Cristóbal, apu principal de la zona de Lima, un ser poderoso antes de la invasión española y un espacio indígena sagrado, reconquistado en la actualidad por los shipibo-konibo.⁷⁵Los dos grandes árboles ubicados a ambos lados de la montaña también son elementos destacados en la composición, ya que subrayan el poder y la importancia de las plantas para la comunidad shipibo en Lima.     

Todas estas obras cuestionan la visión antropocéntrica occidental del paisaje y nos permiten concebir nuevas maneras de entender el paisaje y el territorio. Las ecologías y los materialismos indígenas, por lo tanto, constituyen un enfoque efectivo para analizarlas. Sin embargo, por haber sido producidas en contextos distintos, también hay que analizarlas en sus propios términos. Refiriéndose al arte indígena, Elizabeth Burns Coleman recuerda que es importante conocer “el tipo de categorías generales que rigen la sociedad en la que fue producido [el objeto], así como la categoría con la que el artista que produjo la obra esperaba que fuera entendida o interpretada”.⁷⁶ Los sarhuinos y los shipibo-konibo que viven en sus comunidades rurales están especialmente interesados en la vitalidad de la materia y la interconexión de los distintos seres en la naturaleza. No producen objetos que representan el paisaje o el territorio que les rodea, sino que crean, en colaboración con las montañas y las plantas, entidades con agencia que interactúan con sus contextos más cercanos.

Las obras de arte sarhuino y shipibo-konibo contemporáneas realizadas en Lima han dejado de ser entidades sensibles dado que fueron realizadas para un público urbano y occidental. Los artistas han transmitido, a través de imágenes, el poder de las montañas y las plantas y sus relaciones con otros seres. Sin embargo, al utilizar ciertas estrategias –como la representación de seres naturales con rasgos humanos, la incorporación de elementos materiales del entorno natural y las referencias simbólicas a los conocimientos de sus respectivas comunidades– estas obras de arte siguen siendo objetos poderosos que no dejan de negociar con sus epistemologías indígenas.

The post Sacred and Agentic Landscapes in Peruvian Contemporary Indigenous Art / Paisajes sagrados y con agencia en el arte indígena contemporáneo peruano appeared first on post.

On Conspiratorial Materialisms

Firearms, Molotov cocktails, flags, and banners are some of the objects in an arsenal of protests and revolts. Alongside clenched fists and enraged bodies, these objects form an imaginary of human gestures associated with the uprising. Art historian and curator Georges Didi-Huberman dedicated the exhibition Uprisings (2016–17) to this theme, assembling artworks collectively serving as an atlas of insurgent gestures.¹Among them was Woman with Flag (1928; fig. 1), a photograph by Tina Modotti (Italian, 1896–1942) of a confident Mexican woman. The exhibition also featured works depicting demonstrations, clashes with police, and expressions of rebellion, mourning, or redemption. The project revealed how a specific imagery of revolt appears in artworks from different regions of the world. At the same time, it identified gestures that though originating in particular historical moments have survived, reappeared and been repeated over time, mobilizing, shaping, and influencing other communities engaged in their own uprisings.

In doing so, it prompts us to consider the extent to which we are able to reimagine revolt beyond the patterns of gestural repetition. How can we seek out other gestures, objects, shared dynamics and forms of insurgence? Are there alternative imaginaries that do not conform to conventional uprisings or that engage with non-Western frameworks, characterized by different knowledge systems, notions of the body, materialities, and gestures? In the pursuit of counter-colonizing revolt imagery, it becomes imperative to reclaim narratives, histories, and artistic expressions from the Global South. To construct alternative archives of insurgent gestures, it is essential to explore modes of political action beyond those in which humans are the only conceivable political agents. This essay focuses on an archival examination of the interplay between material culture, religiosity, and insurgency within the history of the Black diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean. Through an array of objects and practices embedded in Afro-derived religions and Afro-diasporic material culture, I intend to shed light on expressions of other imageries of insurgency.

Weapons of combat such as spells, magical powders, talismans, statues, and medicinal or poisonous plants, to name but a few, cannot be comprehended solely through a secular, materialistic perspective, as their power to protect, cure, or cause harm arises from cosmological forces. They are, at their core, imbued with enchantment, understood as the sustenance, containment, and activation of life forces, which in turn are related to knowledge, other beings, and higher powers. Crafted through diverse technological means, these weapons hint at heterogeneous materiality, while their existence and persistence acknowledge a potential for new analytical frameworks. In this text, I delve into the relationship between military arsenals and religion, namely through the usage of religious artifacts as conflict tools of anti-colonial rebellion.

I will refer to these objects as “conspiratorial materialisms”², since they represent enchanted forms of socio-material construction while orchestrating bodies, forces, and historical processes to challenge the established orders and knowledge. The term “conspiracy” encapsulates a reactive nature, embodying both a sense of threat and a will to overthrow. Fighting on two fronts, this understanding of the word disrupts the rationalist and disenchanted materiality of the Enlightenment while dismantling colonial subordinations.

To explore this conspiratorial materialism, I will intertwine historical sources from colonial times with contemporary artistic research and artworks in which they figure. I will consider the artistic practices and work of Ana Mendieta (American, born in Cuba, 1948–1985), Ayrson Heráclito (Brazilian, born 1968), Dalton Paula (Brazilian, born 1982), Abdias do Nascimento (Brazilian, 1914–2011), and Tiago Sant’Ana (Brazilian, born 1990). Here, the archive acts as a crucial political methodology, making room for memorial practices of historically marginalized social groups that were persecuted and suffered the violence of colonialism. By reflecting on the material dimension of these objects against the grain, recovering their histories, and recontextualizing them in a contemporary, counter-colonial framework, I believe we can shed a new light on the political and transformational potency of the colonial archive.

Insurgent Fetish

A defiant and rebellious memory resides within an anonymous manuscript written between 1793 and 1806, where a witness of the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) vividly narrates the French execution of an insurgent. For him, it was not the act of killing that proved most shocking. Following the brutal spectacle, he recalls how the executioners callously searched their victim and his pockets, unveiling a further layer of the revolution: “In one of his pockets [we found] pamphlets printed in France, filled with commonplaces about the Rights of Man and the Sacred Revolution; in his vest was a large packet of tinder and phosphate of lime. On his chest, he had a little sack full of hair, herbs, and bits of bone, which they call a fetish.”³

This amulet led to an understanding of the ontological and epistemological complex of the Black rebels, one in which political writings coexisted with the notion of “fetish.”⁴It survives, albeit in a different geography, in William Blake’s illustration of a Black insurgent in Suriname carrying such a sack beside a firearm (fig. 2). This “fetish” presence conjures up a materialist analysis. As part of the insurgents’ arsenal, it suggests a marked military presence of Afro-derived religious practices during the Haitian revolution.  What seemed like a mere, meaningless joining of objects whatsoever, a trifle, for those trained under the political, secular, and racist gaze of Western thought, this “fetish” brings us however to the order of the “unthinkable.”

For the Haitian American anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot, the unthinkable encompasses “that which cannot be conceived within the range of possible alternatives, that which perverts all the answers because it defies the terms under which the questions were phrased.”⁵The unthinkable points to the ontological and epistemological problem of how to interpret and understand these conspiratorial materialities and their translation into a Western theoretical framework. In other words, how to question the presence of these materialities and make them thinkable. And how, then, not to theoretically pervert their existence and usage. Such perversion not only challenges the colonizer’s limited understanding of historical events but also fosters alternative perspectives on nature and the technologies wielded by collective rebellion.

This fetish shows a way to politically instrumentalize religious materiality and yet it likewise reflects the persistent presence of spirituality within the forces of this insurgency. It illustrates the broad spectrum of material technologies through which Black Africans and their descendants equipped themselves to mitigate, subvert, and combat colonial oppression. Indeed, they insisted on the political dimensions of their cosmologies. In their studies on nineteenth-century slave rebellions in Brazil, historians João José Reis and Flávio dos Santos Gomes address the significant and complex religious presence among enslaved Africans and how this body of knowledge was reflected in counter-power agencies against the colonial state. For Reis and Gomes, the conjunction of African Islam, popular Catholicism, sorcery, and witchcraft, as some of the religious practices of African origin were called, “served as intellectual, moral and practical guides for rebellious slaves, as well as an arsenal for attack and defense.”⁶Today, this warlike apparatus forms an archive of practices that claims other ways of understanding materialism and its possibilities, ways that encompass the composition and capabilities of materials, and their utilization within sociopolitical contexts.

Religiosity brings not only an alternative mode of power administration but also a poetic-political horizon to the ongoing pursuit of epistemic justice. Despite the historical erasure and silencing of Black culture and people by white elites and their political and cultural institutions, some artists have been carrying out the memory work that reaffirms Black ancestral technologies within the Americas and the Caribbean. Despite the imprisonment of African and African-descent doctors, the criminalization of their medicine, and the seizure of their objects, these artists postulate alternative ways of healing. Despite racism, exoticization, folklorization, and the inferiorization of Afro-diasporic cosmology, their research offers new horizons for artistic practice.

Evoking the work of American poet Audre Lorde, Tiago Sant’Ana claims, for instance, that “the master’s tools will never destroy the master’s house” (fig. 3).⁷In so doing, Sant’Ana reminisces about the colonial past and the enslaved people’s labor on Brazilian sugarcane plantations. Further, Lorde’s warning calls for a double gesture—that of inventory and invention. The past, impossible to repeat, can only be actualized as another. When updated into the present, it is necessarily reinvented or even remade. Its actualizations, therefore, are fabrication calls: “Armor fused with axé art and bathed in ebô for the fight against the evils of silencing.”⁸In this sense, conspiratorial materialism offers a way of identifying tools produced outside the colonial power frameworks, but rather along its margins, forcing their way against it.

Revolutionary Vanguard

In this war archive, alongside the fetish, I could also find the case of Joaquim Mina, a well-known African healer and “sorcerer” from western São Paulo arrested in 1856. According to records of the criminal charge against him, he had been sought out by four enslaved people from the Pau d’Alho farm in the State of São Paulo to help murder their slave owner. To achieve it, he asked for materials to fabricate a murderous weapon: “A carved stick, a palm and a half long, woven with white and black threads, with an inlaid glass pedal.” During its fabrication ceremony, “Joaquim’s assistant asked one of the Creoles for a coal . . . and then ‘spat’ . . . on the stick to bless it.” This weapon, similar to a nkisi, according to the historian who recovered the case, was a religious object of the Central African Bakongo People. Shaped as a human body, with two legs and a head, itwas supposed to be buried with its head out “in one of the paths where the slave owner used to pass because at that time the figure would turn into a poisonous snake and bite the victim” (fig. 4).⁹

The act of burying this object of power is given renewed impulse in Ana Mendieta’s Fetish Series, especially in Untitled (Fetish Series, Iowa), in which the artist carved into her own buried silhouette sharp-pointed sticks, just like a nkisi  (fig. 4). These objects of ordering power, called “nail fetishes” by European colonizers, served a protective and attacking function, like “automatic weapons.”Harmut Böhme, Fetishism and Culture: A Different Theory of Modernity, trans. Anna Galt (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014), 197. In Bakongo culture, these piercing objects are considered both inexhaustible receptacles of vitality and bodies containing their own strength and agency. Re-signified within the African diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean, they continue to be manufactured and used in the socio-religious dynamics of some Afro-Atlantic communities.

Religiosity, as we have seen, was energized by the materiality produced along forces which strengthened the ongoing desire for liberation. In this political-religious relationship, figures of religious leaders often referred to as “sorcerers” (priests, pais e mães de santo, healers, vodunsis, and zeladores de santo, among others)  were particularly prominent. According to historian Walter Rucker, in the Caribbean and North American contexts, these “sorcerers” were central to the insurgent conjunctures, composing “a revolutionary vanguard”¹⁰that brought “witchcraft” to the center of political mobilization, agency, and the produced fear among local elites through the tactical use of magical powders or potions either ingested or rubbed on clothing. These substances, such as aduru, an Akan medicine from the West African coast, granted invulnerability, special powers, and rebellious impetus.

In Brazil, the use of medicines, garrafadas, and other compoundings was also prominent in colonial tensions. Healers and religious leaders treated illnesses by using their gifts and knowledge to make remedies, herbal baths, and poisons or feitiços (spells) through which they promoted a silent struggle against their masters. One of these drinks became known as amansa senhor (tame lord) as it was used by the enslaved to subdue or even kill their masters. Produced with guinea-hen weed, known in Brazil as guiné or amansa senhor (Petiveria alliacea), it was manipulated using secrets and mysteries to render its victim apathetic and thus incapable of inflicting violence.¹¹

The sculpture Paratudo by Brazilian artist Dalton Paulawas inspired by a research project engaging with this “silent weaponry” to which the amansa senhor and the feitiços belong (fig. 5). Made up of bottles of Paratudo, a Brazilian liqueur, the piece also incorporates guiné, which Paula added to the original beverage. He then tied the bottles together using a fishnet and suspended them from a thicker rope. The piece, conceived for the solo exhibition Amansa-senhor (2015) at Sé in São Paulo, elaborates an analysis of the tactical uses of Indigenous and Afro-descendant spiritual and medicinal knowledge to subvert or arm oneself against colonial oppressions. At the same time, it incorporates organic and perishable elements activated through forces driven by a cosmological and spiritual power.

The reintroduction of ancestral knowledge, especially of plants, has been highlighted in the work of artists like Ayrson Heráclito. In his Sacudimentos series, for example, Heráclito performed two spiritual cleansing rituals in two large architectural monuments linked to the Atlantic slave trade: the Maison des Esclaves (Gorée, Senegal) and the Casa da Torre (Bahia, Brazil). The performance, recorded on video, involved a group of men holding bunches of heated sacred leaves, which they beat and then rubbed on the buildings’ walls (fig. 6). Sacudimento, or spiritual cleansing, is used in African religions to chase eguns, or spirits of the dead, from domestic spaces. Through this political-spiritual gesture, the artist disturbed history by exorcising the ghosts of colonization. In his artistic practice, Heráclito works with a “mystical activism,”¹²serving as an “exorcist artist”¹³by incorporating the political into Afro-Brazilian spiritual practices. Through its implications, interventions, and disruptions of power and violence, this activist practice operates within colonial structures beyond disenchanted agencies, identifying alternative methods of challenging how colonialism operates.

Rebellious Amulets

For the exhibition Acts of Revolt: Other Imaginaries on Independence (2022–23), commissioned by the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro, Tiago Sant’Ana created the installation Museu da Revolta Bahiense (Museum of the Bahian Revolt). Putting the museum at the center of the installation the artists pointed out its problematic role in the historical construction of Brazil, largely silencing historical events mobilized by Africans and Afro-descendants while showing how to dispute it. In Museu da Revolta Bahiense, he assembled a group of objects evoking insurgencies led by Afro-descendants in Bahia in the nineteenth century. Through this collection of items whose stories straddle fiction and truth, the installation strained the limits, problems, and the archive’s possibilities in constructing a unified Brazilian national history. As a speculative record, it fabled both the objects in time and the time of the objects.

Among these objects, we could find  escritos de guardar o corpo (writings to guard the body), a small leather-bound book with inscriptions in Arabic described as an “amulet with prayers and words of hope to protect the body and soul of the people who were fighting against slavery and religious intolerance, and with ideas of establishing an Islamic republic in Bahia” (figs. 7, 8). Such amulet-books, also called patuás, were present, along with other manuscripts, in the Malês Rebellion of 1835, one of the most important Brazilian revolts, undertaken in Bahia by enslaved people of Nagô and Houssá origin.

According to historian João José Reis, these patuás, like the “fetish” belonging to the Haitian insurgent, were leather pouches that, in various iterations depending on their use and purpose, could contain different elements and “insignificant things,” such as “cotton wrapped in a bit of dust,” “bits of garbage,” “cowries,” or even “a small piece of paper written in Arabic letters.” ¹⁴One such “little book” was donated to the Brazilian Historic and Geographical Institute (IHGB)¹⁵by a member of the Bahian elite at the time of the revolt. In the letter accompanying this gift, the donor described it as a curious object taken from the neck of one of the “Africans killed in the insurrection,” who had “attributed it with the miraculous effect of scaring away bullets and preserving him from death.”¹⁶Beyond the seemingly “insignificant” materiality of patuás, the iconographic elements incorporated in these talismans persistently assert the agential power of symbols and words, indicating a technological aspect.

Part of a variety of tactics still used by multiple Afro-diasporic communities, the graphism in the Malê amulet, like the Bantu pontos riscados in Umbanda and Candomblé, or the Jeje vèvè in Vodou, are also used to summon and invoke entities. The recurrence of this graphic, often made of white pemba,¹⁷as is visible in a 1947 work by Haitian artist Wilson Bigaud (fig. 9), indicates its itinerancy through the Afro-American diaspora across the Americas and the Caribbean but also its iconographic importance in establishing a connection with the spiritual world.

In Bastideana no. 3: Ponto Riscado de Exu Cruzado com Xangô (fig. 10), Abdias do Nascimento portrayed two of Candomblé´s entities: Exu’s “ponto riscado” and Xangô’s ax, which is depicted in red in the background of the canvas. Exu, as the lord of pathways and encruzilhadas (crossroads), initiates movement and serves as the orixá of communication and language, while Xangô represents justice and fire. Knowing the impossibility of representing these beings, the ponto riscado makes them present. As a way of calling gods, beings, and encantados, these symbols allow those to come, when respectfully called upon, and operate within our human realm.

An Archive of Conspiratorial Materialism

Insurgent fetishes, tamer plants, rebellious amulets, and other symbols of power collectively form this conspiratorial materialism archive. The material composition of these objects is deeply intertwined with their respective cosmological systems, rooted in the religions of African ancestry. This connection to the inherent power emanating from them transcends a purely rational understanding of materiality.

Within the framework of conspiratorial materialism, there is pronounced emphasis on these objects’ power and agency as they are strategically used against colonial hegemony, and as tools of symbolic and political contention. By engaging with these objects through the various artistic practices presented here, I aim to go beyond the mere nexus between religiosity in the Americas and contemporary artistic endeavors to carve out a political-poetic horizon—one that prompts us to overcome the secular and disenchanted foundations of Western aesthetics.

Spanish

Sobre el materialismo conspirativo

Armas de fuego, cócteles molotov, banderas y pancartas son algunos de los objetos que forman parte del arsenal utilizado en protestas y revueltas. Junto a los puños en alto y a los cuerpos enfurecidos, estos objetos conforman un imaginario de gestos humanos asociados a la sublevación. El historiador de arte y comisario Georges Didi-Huberman dedicó la exposición Sublevaciones (2016-17) a este tema, para la cual reunió obras de arte que colectivamente funcionaban como un atlas de gestos de insurgencia¹⁸. Entre esas obras se encontraba Woman with Flag (1928, fig. 1), una fotografía de Tina Modotti (Italia, 1896-1942) en la que se ve a una confiada mujer mexicana . Otras obras representaban manifestaciones, enfrentamientos con la policía y gestos de rebeldía, duelo o redención. El proyecto evidenció la existencia de un imaginario específico de la rebelión presente en obras de arte de distintas regiones del mundo. Al mismo tiempo, identificó los gestos que  a pesar de haber surgido en un momento histórico concreto, han sobrevivido, han reaparecido y se han repetido a lo largo del tiempo, movilizando, configurando e influyendo en otras comunidades inmersas en sus propias sublevaciones. 

De esta forma, Didi-Huberman invitaba a reflexionar hasta qué punto somos capaces de reimaginar una rebelión por fuera de los meros patrones de repetición gestual. ¿Cómo localizar otros gestos, objetos, dinámicas compartidas y formas de insurgencia? ¿Existen imaginarios alternativos que no se ajusten a los levantamientos convencionales o que se inscriban en contextos no occidentales, caracterizados por sistemas de conocimiento, ideas sobre el cuerpo, materialidades y gestos diferentes? Para lograr un imaginario de rebelión contra-colonial es clave reivindicar las narrativas, historias y expresiones artísticas del Sur Global. Al construir archivos alternativos de gestos de insurgencia, es importante explorar distintos mecanismos de acción política que excedan aquellos en los que los seres humanos son los únicos agentes políticos concebibles. Este ensayo presenta un análisis de archivo centrado en la correlación entre cultura material, religiosidad e insurgencia en la historia de la diáspora negra en el continente americano y el Caribe. A través de una serie de objetos y prácticas integradas a las religiones de origen africano y a la cultura material de la diáspora africana, me propongo arrojar luz sobre las expresiones de otros imaginarios de insurgencia.

Ciertas armas de combate como los hechizos, los polvos mágicos, los talismanes, las estatuillas y las plantas medicinales o venenosas, por nombrar sólo algunas, no se pueden interpretar únicamente desde una perspectiva secular y materialista, porque su poder para proteger, curar o causar daño proviene de fuerzas cosmológicas. En esencia, están imbuidas de encantamientos, entendidos como soportes, contenedores y activadores de las fuerzas vitales que, a su vez, están relacionadas al conocimiento, a otros seres y poderes superiores. Elaboradas con diversos recursos tecnológicos, estas armas revelan una materialidad heterogénea, y su existencia y permanencia habilita el potencial de nuevos marcos analíticos. En el presento texto, profundizo en la relación entre el arsenal militar y la religión, concretamente a través del uso de artefactos religiosos como herramientas de conflicto en la lucha anti-colonial.

En adelante, voy a referirme a estos objetos como “materialismos conspirativos”¹⁹, ya que representan mecanismos de construcción socio-material con encantamientos, al tiempo que instrumentalizan los cuerpos, las fuerzas y los procesos históricos para desafiar los órdenes y conocimientos establecidos. El término “conspiración” describe un carácter reactivo, y encarna tanto la sensación de amenaza como la voluntad de derrocamiento. Luchando en dos frentes, esta manera de pensar el término desbarata la materialidad racionalista y desencantada de la Ilustración, y al mismo tiempo desmantela las subordinaciones coloniales.

Para indagar en este materialismo conspiratorio, enlazaré fuentes históricas del período colonial con investigaciones artísticas contemporáneas y obras de arte en las que está presente. Para ello trabajaré las obras y prácticas artísticas de Ana Mendieta (estadounidense, nacida en Cuba, 1948-1985), Ayrson Heráclito (Brasil, 1968), Dalton Paula (Brasil, 1982), Abdias do Nascimento (Brasil, 1914-2011) y Tiago Sant’Ana (Brasil, 1990). En este caso, el archivo funciona como una metodología política fundamental ya que da lugar a prácticas de recuperación de la memoria de grupos sociales históricamente marginados, que fueron perseguidos y sufrieron la violencia del colonialismo. Creo que si reflexionamos sobre la dimensión material de estos objetos que van a contrapelo, recuperamos sus historias y los recontextualizamos en un marco contemporáneo y contracolonial, podremos arrojar una nueva luz sobre el potencial político y transformador del archivo colonial.

Fetiches insurgentes

En un manuscrito anónimo escrito entre 1793 y 1806, podemos encontrar un recuerdo provocador y rebelde, en el que un testigo de la Revolución Haitiana (1791-1804) narra de forma muy detallada la ejecución de un rebelde por parte de los franceses. Todavía, para el narrador, lo más impactante no fue el acto del asesinato. Tras el brutal espectáculo, recuerda la manera en que los verdugos revisaron insensiblemente a la víctima y sus bolsillos, desvelando otra capa más de la revolución: “En uno de sus bolsillos [encontramos] panfletos impresos en Francia, plagados de lugares comunes sobre los Derechos del Hombre y la Sagrada Revolución; en el chaleco había un paquete grande de pólvora y fosfato de cal. En el pecho llevaba un pequeño saco repleto de pelos, hierbas y trocitos de hueso, lo que ellos llaman un fetiche”²⁰.

Este amuleto permitió comprender la complejidad ontológica y epistemológica de los rebeldes negros, para quienes los textos políticos convivían junto a la idea de “fetiche”²¹.  También sobrevive, aunque en una geografía distinta, en la ilustración de William Blake en la que se puede ver a un insurgente negro en Surinam, quien lleva un saco de este tipo junto a un arma de fuego (fig. 2). Esta presencia “fetichista” invoca un análisis materialista. Al formar parte del arsenal de los insurgentes, señala la marcada presencia militar de las prácticas religiosas de origen africano durante la Revolución Haitiana. Sin embargo, aunque parecía una mera acumulación de objetos sin sentido, una nimiedad, para quienes se habían formado en la visión política, laica y racista del pensamiento occidental, este “fetiche” nos coloca en el orden de lo “impensable”.

Para el antropólogo estadounidense de origen haitiano Michel-Rolph Trouillot, lo impensable abarca “²². Lo impensable plantea el problema ontológico y epistemológico de cómo interpretar y comprender estas materialidades conspiratorias y su traducción a un marco teórico occidental. En otras palabras, cómo interpretar la presencia de estas materialidades y volverlas pensables. Y cómo, por lo tanto, no tergiversar teóricamente su existencia y su uso. La tergiversación no sólo desafía la limitada comprensión de los acontecimientos históricos por parte del colonizador, sino que además favorece el surgimiento de visiones alternativas de la naturaleza y las tecnologías empleadas por la rebelión colectiva.

Este fetiche muestra una manera de instrumentalizar políticamente la materialidad religiosa y, al mismo tiempo, refleja la constante presencia de la espiritualidad en las filas de la insurgencia. Ilustra el amplio espectro de tecnologías materiales con las que se equiparon los negros africanos y sus descendientes para mitigar, subvertir y combatir la opresión colonial. De hecho, insiste en las dimensiones políticas de sus cosmologías. En sus investigaciones sobre las rebeliones de esclavizados durante el siglo XIX en Brasil, los historiadores João José Reis y Flávio dos Santos Gomes analizan la significativa y compleja presencia religiosa entre los africanos esclavizados y la forma en que ese corpus de conocimientos se veía reflejado en los órganos de contrapoder frente al Estado colonial. Para Reis y Gomes, la combinación del islam africano, el catolicismo popular, la hechicería y la brujería, como se denominaban a algunas de las prácticas religiosas de origen africano, “sirvieron como guías intelectuales, morales y prácticas para los esclavos rebeldes, así como arsenal para el ataque y la defensa”²³. En la actualidad, este aparato bélico constituye un archivo de prácticas que reivindica otras formas de entender el materialismo y sus posibilidades, formas que incluyen la composición y funciones de los materiales, así como su utilización dentro de los contextos sociopolíticos.  

            La religiosidad no sólo aporta un modelo alternativo de administración del poder, sino también un horizonte poético-político a la constante búsqueda de justicia epistémica. Pese al silenciamiento y borrado histórico de la cultura y el pueblo negros por parte de las élites blancas y sus instituciones políticas y culturales, algunos artistas han llevado a cabo un ejercicio de memoria que reafirma las tecnologías ancestrales negras presentes en el continente americano y el Caribe. A pesar del encarcelamiento de los curanderos africanos y afrodescendientes, de la criminalización de su medicina y confiscación de sus objetos, estos artistas proponen caminos alternativos de sanación. Pese al racismo, la exotización, la folclorización y la inferiorización de la cosmología afrodiaspórica, sus investigaciones ofrecen nuevos horizontes para la práctica artística.

Invocando la obra de la poeta estadounidense Audre Lorde, Tiago Sant’Ana afirma, por ejemplo, que “las herramientas del Amo jamás desmantelaránla casa del Amo” (fig. 3)²⁴.  Con ello, Sant’Ana rememora el pasado colonial y el trabajo de los esclavizados en las plantaciones de caña de azúcar brasileñas. Además, la advertencia de Lorde exige un doble gesto: el de la invención y el del inventario. El pasado, imposible de repetir, sólo se puede actualizar como otro pasado. Al restaurarlo en el presente, inevitablemente se lo reinventa o incluso rehace. Sus actualizaciones, por tanto, son llamados a la creación: “Armaduras fusionadas con arte axé y bañadas en ebô para luchar contra los males del silenciamiento”²⁵.  En este sentido, el materialismo conspirativo ofrece un mecanismo para identificar las herramientas producidas por fuera de los marcos de poder coloniales, más bien en sus márgenes, abriéndose un camino en su contra.

Vanguardia revolucionaria

En este archivo de guerra, junto al fetiche, me he encontrado con el caso de Joaquim Mina, un famoso curandero y “hechicero” africano afincado al oeste de São Paulo y detenido en 1856. Según las actas de la acusación penal en su contra, cuatro esclavizados de la hacienda Pau d’Alho lo habían buscado para que les ayudara a asesinar a su amo. Para conseguirlo, les pidió algunos materiales con los que fabricar el arma homicida: “Un palo tallado, de palmo y medio de largo, tejido con fibras blancas y negras, con un pedal de vidrio incrustado”. Durante la ceremonia de fabricación, “el ayudante de Joaquim pidió a uno de los creoles un carbón. . . y luego ‘escupió’… sobre el palo para bendecirlo”. El arma, similar a un nkisi –según el historiador que recuperó la caja– era un artefacto religioso del pueblo centroafricano Baongo. Tenía la forma del cuerpo humano, con dos piernas y una cabeza, y debía ser enterrado con la cabeza hacia fuera “en alguno de los senderos por donde solía caminar el amo, porque en ese momento la figura se iba a convertir en una serpiente venenosa e iba a morder a la víctima”²⁶(fig. 4). 

            El acto de enterrar este objeto de poder vuelve a cobrar impulso en la Serie Fetiche de Ana Mendieta, sobre todo en Untitled (Fetish Series, Iowa) [Sin título (Serie Fetiche, Iowa)], en la que la artista talló su propia silueta enterrada y le clavó palos de punta afilada, como si fueran nkisi (fig. 4). Estos objetos dotados con un poder de ordenamiento, y que los colonizadores europeos llamaron “fetiches de clavos”, cumplían una función protectora y de ataque, como “armas automáticas”²⁷. En la cultura bakongo, estos objetos punzantes se consideran tanto inagotables receptáculos de vitalidad como cuerpos que conservan su propia voluntad y agenciamiento. Resignificados en la diáspora africana en el continente americano y el Caribe, se siguen fabricando y utilizando en la dinámica sociorreligiosa de algunas comunidades afroatlánticas.

La religiosidad, como hemos visto, se dinamizaba por la materialidad producida junto a fuerzas que reforzaban el deseo continuo de liberación. En este vínculo político-religioso destacaban las figuras de los líderdes religiosos, a menudo denominados “hechiceros” (sacerdotes, pais e mães de santo, curanderos, vodunsis y zeladores de santo, entre otros). Según el historiador Walter Rucker, en los ámbitos caribeño y norteamericano, estos “hechiceros” ocuparon un lugar primordial en las coyunturas de insurgencia, conformando “una vanguardia revolucionaria”²⁸que colocó a la “brujería” en el centro de la movilización política, el agenciamiento y el miedo que surgía entre las élites locales por el uso táctico de polvos o pociones mágicas ingeridas o frotadas en la ropa. Estas sustancias –como el aduru, una medicina akan de la costa occidental africana– otorgaban invulnerabilidad, poderes especiales e ímpetu rebelde.

Los remedios, garrafadas y otros brebajes también ocuparon un rol importante en las tensiones coloniales en Brasil. Los curanderos y líderes religiosos trataban las enfermedades utilizando sus dones y conocimientos para elaborar medicinas, baños de hierbas y venenos o feitiços (hechizos) con los que promovían una silenciosa lucha contra sus amos. Una de estas bebidas se hizo conocida como amansa senhor (“amansadora de amos”) porque los esclavos la utilizaban para reducir o incluso matar a sus amos. Elaborada con la hierba de gallina de Guinea –conocida en Brasil como guiné o amansa senhor (Petiveria alliacea)– la manipulaban empleando secretismos y misterios con el fin de apaciguar a la víctima y volverla incapaz de infligir violencia²⁹.

La escultura Paratudo del artista brasileño Dalton Paula se inspiró en un proyecto de investigación relacionado con ese “armamento silencioso” al que pertenecen la amansa senhor y los feitiços (fig. 5). Compuesta con botellas de Paratudo, un licor brasileño, la pieza también contiene guiné, que Paula añadió a la bebida original. Luego, amarró las botellas con una red de pesca y las colgó de una cuerda más gruesa. La escultura, diseñada para la exposición individual Amansa-senhor (2015) en Sé (São Paulo), desarrolla un análisis de los usos tácticos del conocimiento espiritual y medicinal indígena y afrodescendiente con el fin de resistir o armarse contra la opresión colonial. Al mismo tiempo, incorpora elementos orgánicos y perecederos que se activan a través de fuerzas guiadas por un poder cosmológico y espiritual.

La dinamización de conocimientos ancestrales, en especial referidos a plantas, ha ocupado un lugar destacado en la obra de artistas como Ayrson Heráclito. En su serie Sacudimentos, por ejemplo, Heráclito llevó a cabo dos rituales de limpieza espiritual en dos grandes monumentos arquitectónicos vinculados a la trata de esclavizados en el Atlántico: la Maison des Esclaves (Gorée, Senegal) y la Casa da Torre (Bahía, Brasil). En la performance, grabada en vídeo, se puede ver a un grupo de hombres con manojos de hojas sagradas y calentadas en las manos, que golpean y luego frotan las paredes de los edificios (fig. 6). El sacudimento o limpieza espiritual se utiliza en las religiones africanas para expulsar a los eguns o espíritus de los muertos de los espacios domésticos. Con este gesto político-espiritual, el artista alteró la historia exorcizando los fantasmas de la colonización. En su obra, Heráclito trabaja un “activismo místico”³⁰y actúa como “artista exorcista”³¹ ya que incorpora lo político a las prácticas espirituales afrobrasileñas. Por sus repercusiones, intervenciones e interrupciones del poder y la violencia, esta práctica activista opera en el interior de las estructuras coloniales, más allá de los agenciamientos desencantados, señalando métodos alternativos para desafiar el funcionamiento del colonialismo.

Amuletos rebeldes

Para la exposición Atos de revolta: outros imaginários sobre independência [Actos de rebelión: Otros imaginarios sobre la independencia] (2022-23), por encargo del Museu de Arte Moderna de Río de Janeiro, Tiago Sant’Ana realizó la instalación Museu da Revolta Bahiense. Al colocarlo en el centro de la instalación, el artista señaló el problemático papel que la figura del museo ejerció en la construcción histórica de Brasil, al silenciar en gran medida los acontecimientos impulsados por africanos y afrodescendientes, a la vez que mostró cómo disputarlo. En Museu da Revolta Bahiense, Sant’Ana recolectó un grupo de objetos que remiten a las revueltas protagonizadas por los afrodescendientes en Bahía en el siglo XIX. Mediante la colección de objetos cuyas historias oscilan entre la ficción y la verdad, la instalación ponía a prueba los límites, los conflictos y las posibilidades del archivo en la construcción de una historia nacional unificada en Brasil. En tanto registro especulativo, creaba una fábula sobre los objetos en el tiempo y sobre el tiempo de los objetos.

Entre estos objetos se encontraban los escritos de guardar o corpo [escritos para cuidar el cuerpo], un pequeño libro encuadernado en cuero con inscripciones en árabe descrito como “un amuleto con oraciones y frases esperanzadoras para proteger el cuerpo y el alma de las personas que luchaban contra la esclavitud y la intolerancia religiosa, y con ideas para establecer una república islámica en Bahía” (figs. 7, 8). Este tipo de libros- amuleto, también denominados patuás, aparecieron junto a otros manuscritos en la Rebelión de los Malês de 1835, una de las revueltas más importantes de Brasil, protagonizada en Bahía por personas esclavizadas de origen nagó y houssá.

Según el historiador João José Reis, estos patuás, al igual que el “fetiche” del haitiano sublevado, eran bolsitas de cuero que, en diversas versiones según su uso y finalidad, podían contener distintos elementos y “cosas insignificantes”, como “algodón cubierto con un poco de polvo”, “trozos de basura”, “conchas de cauri” o incluso “un pequeño trozo de papel escrito en letras árabes”³². Uno de estos “libritos” fue donado por un miembro de la élite bahiana en la época de la insurgencia al Instituto Histórico y Geográfico Brasileño (IHGB)³³. En la carta que acompañaba la donación, el benefactor lo describía como un curioso objeto extraído del cuello de uno de los “africanos asesinados en la sublevación”, quien le había “atribuido el milagroso poder de ahuyentar las balas y librarlo de la muerte”³⁴. Más allá de la materialidad aparentemente “insignificante” de los patuás, los elementos iconográficos incluidos en estos talismanes tenazmente confirman el poder de agenciamiento de los símbolos y las palabras, lo que denota su aspecto tecnológico.      

Como parte de una serie de tácticas que en la actualidad siguen utilizando muchas comunidades afrodiaspóricas, el grafismo del amuleto Malê, al igual que los pontos riscados bantúes en la umbanda y en el candomblé o el Jeje vèvè en el vodou, también se emplean para llamar e invocar entidades. La reaparición de esta grafía, a menudo hecho con pemba³⁵blanca –como se puede ver en una pieza de 1947 realizada por el artista haitiano Wilson Bigaud (fig. 9), nos muestra su itinerancia por la diáspora afroamericana a lo largo del continente americano y el Caribe, pero también su importancia iconográfica a la hora de establecer una conexión con el mundo espiritual.

En Bastideana no. 3: Ponto Riscado de Exu Cruzado com Xangô (fig. 10), Abdias do Nascimento retrató dos entidadesdel Candomblé: el “ponto riscado” de Exu y el hacha de Xangô, que aparece en rojo al fondo de la tela. Exu, como señor de los caminos y de las encruzilhadas, inicia el movimiento y es el orixá de la comunicación y del lenguaje, mientras que Xangô representa la justicia y el fuego. Consciente de la imposibilidad de representar estos seres, el ponto riscado hace que estén presentes. Al ser mecanismos empleados para invocar dioses, seres y encantados, estos símbolos permiten su manifestación, siempre y cuando se les llame respetuosamente, para operar en nuestro ámbito humano.

Un archivo de los materialismos conspiratorios

Los fetiches de los insurgentes, las plantas amansadoras, los amuletos de rebeldía y demás símbolos de poder forman colectivamente este archivo de materialismo conspiratorio. La composición material de estos objetos está profundamente ligada a sus respectivos sistemas cosmológicos, arraigados a su vez en las religiones de ascendencia africana. Esta conexión con el poder inherente que emana de ellos trasciende una comprensión puramente racional de la materialidad.

En el marco del materialismo conspiratorio se hace especial hincapié en el poder y agenciamiento de estos objetos, ya que son utilizados de forma estratégica contra la hegemonía colonial y como herramientas de contención simbólica y política. Al abordar estos objetos a través de las diversas prácticas artísticas presentadas aquí, pretendo ir más allá de establecer únicamente un vínculo entre la religiosidad en el continente americano y Caribe y los esfuerzos artísticos contemporáneos, para trazar un horizonte político-poético que nos anime a trascender los fundamentos seculares y desencantados de la estética occidental.

The post Materiality Against the Grain: Conspiratorial Materialisms and Afro-Diasporic Arsenal / Materialidad a contrapelo: materialismo conspiratorio y arsenal afrodiaspórico appeared first on post.

In Take My Breath Away, the Guggenheim Museum’s 2018 survey of work by artist Danh Vo (born 1975), Death Sentence (2009) was displayed in a custom shelf wrapping the inner edge of the museum’s iconic spiral ramp. Visitors encountered a sequence of sixty white sheets of standard A4-size paper adorned in blue ink calligraphy (supplied by the artist’s father, Phung Vo) in a script that is at once precise, orderly, and quickly assimilated, as it is florid, flowing, and idiosyncratic. First produced in 2009, the piece is a collaboration between the artist, his father, and his close friend and fellow artist Julie Ault (born 1957). Across the sixty pages of paper, Phung copied a sequence of five texts selected by Ault, each of which meditates, in its own quirky way, on themes of death, mourning, and representation.¹

At the Guggenheim, the pages were placed face up on the horizontal shelf and exposed to the warm natural light flooding the atrium through the building’s oculus. Despite protective glass, the installation risked the work’s integrity since the sun pouring in through the skylight would slowly bleach the ink over the course of the exhibition’s three-month run. The willingness to court the potential destruction of an art object, appropriately titled Death Sentence, through its (re)presentation is a gesture that runs through much of Vo’s practice as he commonly curates, presents, alters, and rearranges objects that are sedimented with historical, cultural, and personal significance. Rather than treating the objects assimilated into his practice as rarefied objects of value to be preserved and protected for posterity, he approaches them as things to be worked with and used in the present.²

My approach employs a soft Marxian analytic regarding notions of use and value.³ For Marx, capitalist value is largely centered on the production of commodities, or things that can be bought and sold in the marketplace. The commodification of art within the art market reflects this position, as the fetishistic assignment of value to a given work is often organized around the work’s physical presence as an enduring art object: something that is to be preserved, rather than used. In Vo’s practice, there is consistent refusal to preserve the commodity/art object as he purchases objects on the market before converting them back into “use values” that he consumes within his own practice. This move doesn’t necessarily subvert or resist the logic of the market, but it does invert and queer these logics as, for example, he cannibalizes these works into his broader practice, before returning them to the market to sell at a dearer rate. But in making use of them, he may alter or even, depending on one’s perspective, destroy, if not kill, them.

To make the wall-mounted installation Lot 20. Two Kennedy Administration Cabinet Room Chairs (2013), for example, Vo purchased at auction two chairs that Jackie Kennedy had given to Robert McNamara. McNamara was one of the chief architects of the Vietnam War. Kennedy gave the chairs to McNamara following the assassination of her husband John F. Kennedy, the president who oversaw the war’s commencement. A refugee of the war, Vo disassembled the chairs and displayed their leather upholstery, padding, and desiccated wooden skeletons as a deconstructed sculptural arrangement. Refusing to freeze these historically overdetermined objects in time, Vo makes use of the chairs in a fashion that rescues them from becoming nostalgic, nationalist relics, while transforming them into a still-life spectacle of vengeful, anti-imperial critique, annihilating and exposing their previous form. By acquiring these historically and ideologically charged objects only to dismantle them, the artist coolly and violently confronts the equally destructive legacy of “Camelot,” before breathing new life into these objects for and in his critical present.

As Vo makes (new) use of and (re)presents objects that are tethered to converging sites of death and mourning (the abstract scale of the death and destruction of Vietnamese life during the war alongside the intimate grieving practices of the people who designed and executed the war), he confronts the spectator with the compresence of life and death and, similarly, a mutually implicated relationship between creation and destruction. These pairs do not form oppositional binaries, but instead are resolved into a state of constant, co-constitutive relation. Life with death, creation with destruction.

Exposing Death Sentence to the sun might have destroyed the work, but it was not the Guggenheim’s to destroy. The piece was on loan from The Museum of Modern Art, which, in 2010, acquired Death Sentence along with two of Vo’s other works. For that acquisition, Vo’s gallery supplied MoMA with an invoice doubling as the artist’s certificate of authenticity, a copy of Phung’s text, an appendix with a bibliography of the five texts comprising the work, and instructions for manufacturing the custom wood, glass, and metal cabinet to be used for its display.⁴

Through the certificate of authenticity, Vo cites the conceptual practice of one of his major influences, Félix González-Torres (1957–1996), who often supplied collectors with certificates of authenticity and instructions for assembling his work, thus forgoing the delivery of an enduring art object. The work’s life, in such pieces, need not exist as ossified commodity. It may exist instead, when it is staged or performed in a given time and place and in relation to a specific public.⁵ As a conceptual work, however, Death Sentence is distinguished by the presence of an enduring object as its central component: Phung’s text. Unwilling to risk the destruction of MoMA’s property via the artist’s ongoing use of the work at the Guggenheim, it was decided that for this particular installation, Phung would produce a new copy of the text, which would be subject to slow death by ultraviolet bath. MoMA would retain its “original.”⁶ By having his father produce another copy, one fated for destruction by way of the Guggenheim’s oculus, the artist quietly questioned where the work lives or even what MoMA has purchased. Does the museum own the concept for the piece, it’s schematics, Phung’s first sixty-page copy of the manuscript, the right to materialize the work, or some combination of these and other elements? Further, the solution worked out for the Guggenheim exhibition raised the question of whether the work could ever truly be possessed or destroyed. I am less interested in resolving these questions than I am in the way Vo’s practice consistently raises them. As he does so, he places pressure on a conception of “value” that is grounded in the preservation of the art object as commodity, and suggests instead a notion of art as a ceaselessly unfolding process/practice of mutually implied creation and destruction. One that appropriates objects and artworks to use and consume them in the making of new work. The impulse is not merely, or not always, destructive.⁷ Rather, it may be instructive insofar as it teaches a powerful set of lessons about living with destruction, if not the universal death sentence that accompanies all forms of living.

It is significant that Phung produced Death Sentence with the same ink and calligraphic style that he used for another ongoing collaboration with his son, 2.2.1861 (2009).⁸ For this latter work, which is also on paper, Phung reproduced a letter sent from French missionary Jean-Théophane Vénard to his father on the event of his beheading, having been condemned to death by the Vietnamese crown for illegal proselytization. In it, Vénard writes that “all [involved] regret that the law of the kingdom condemns me to the death sentence.”⁹ It is dated January 20, 1861. The artwork’s title refers to the fact that the letter was received by the father some days later, after his son’s death, on February 2, 1861. The piece is editioned, but the edition will only be defined by the conclusion of Phung’s own life. As Vo writes, “My father will write this letter repeatedly until he dies,” suggesting that the work itself is a kind of “death sentence.”¹⁰ The number of editions will be determined by the number of times the piece is purchased until Phung dies. MoMA acquired Death Sentence for its collection together with an edition of 2.2.1861. When displayed in relation to Death Sentence, as it did in the Guggenheim’s rotunda in Take My Breath Away, the two works offer a profound meditation on the compresence of a multitude of unfolding presents with the finitude of death: that is, not life versus death, but the mutual implication of life and death (as well as creation and destruction) with each other.

The origins of Death Sentence are based in Vo’s friendship with Ault, one born from the grounds of queer of color loss. González-Torres died in 1996 at age thirty-eight amid the first waves of the AIDS crisis. He has been a major influence on Vo’s practice, and the two share a set of formal and autobiographical similarities. Both are artists who deploy sculptural, conceptual, and performance dynamics in their practices, just as both are queer men and refugees of the Cold War (Cuba and Vietnam, respectively) who incorporate autobiographical matter into their work. But by the time Vo encountered the work of this queer ancestor, or Cold War cousin, González-Torres was already dead.

Ault was one of González-Torres’s dearest friends and collaborators. They worked closely together and, in 1987, Ault helped recruit him to join the conceptual art collective Group Material. In the early 2000s, Ault was briefly in residence in Denmark, where Vo’s family settled after escaping Vietnam by boat when he was a child. He sought her out with questions about González-Torres’s practice and process. According to Vo , she was interested in what the “next generation” of artists would do with González-Torres’s legacy. She was immersed in editing her 2006 compendium Felix González-Torres¹¹ and the two began a dialogue regarding González-Torres. This dialogue led to a deep and ongoing friendship.¹²

As he was preparing for his landmark 2009 exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel, Where the Lions Are, Vo invited Ault to write a text for the exhibition catalogue. She was unsure at first, but they agreed to meet at a film festival in Argentina where they continued the exchange. Of the trip he remembers only the consuming nature of their conversations at the hotel and the films. Ault would later reflect that “the period was exuberant and exhausting; we thrived on and suffered from utter mental saturation.”¹³ From the exchange, Ault curated the five texts to be reproduced at the catalogue’s conclusion in lieu of the traditional catalogue essay, titling her contribution “Death Sentence.” Doing so, she sought to avoid the exegetical form that is the norm for the catalogue essay: “It didn’t ring true for me to interpret or explain Danh’s work. It didn’t make sense to have something like a unified narrative.”¹⁴ Rather, and in Vo’s own words, he “wanted a text that I could use for the future . . . something to learn from. That you can carry with you. I think that’s also what I mean when I think of artwork. No? It just sits there and you keep thinking about it.”¹⁵ Sharing the desire for a text that could be worked with and used over time, rather than explaining and fixing Vo’s work in time, Ault chose texts that “bore a kind of analogic . . . significance to Danh’s way of thinking and working . . . because of the way that they would, together, as a whole, configure, not diagram, but begin to configure, or suggest, a kind of unfolding of the cosmology of Danh’s practice.”¹⁶ Her hope that Vo would continue to work with the texts bore immediate fruits as he absorbed them into a new piece, also titled Death Sentence, which was first displayed at Art Basel in Miami Beach in 2009 before being purchased by MoMA in 2010.

Reading the five texts in sequence, one finds a wide range of resonances with Vo’s practice. In a lushly poetic fragment from a California land survey, for example, one catches descriptive language that seems presciently relevant to Vo’s conceptual approach. The author, John McPhee, lyrically narrates the earth’s story through the analogy of furniture housed in an attic, all in different styles and from different eras. Resonating with Vo’s practice of curating and (re)presenting objects amid shifting contexts and points of reference, McPhee writes that one tells such objects’ stories by moving “backward through shifting space to differing points in time,” before consoling the reader by telling them that “you can’t see the story whole. You cannot tell when each of these items has come, any more than its maker could have known where it would go.”¹⁷ This emphasis on subjective experience and contextual meaning making not only points to Vo’s methods, but also resonates with tactics deployed by Ault and Gonzalez-Torres (as evidenced in Group Material’s seminal AIDS Timeline of 1989).¹⁸

A fragment from an essay by Pier Paolo Pasolini, in turn, dissects the cinematic footage of Kennedy’s assassination. Reading the footage, Pasolini describes the way a sequence of cinematic shots form a multitude of unfolding, subjective presents. Through the effects of montage, he writes, “We obtain a multiplication of ‘presents,’ as if an action, instead of unfolding only once before our eyes, unfolded more times.”¹⁹ The act of cinematic editing (of editing the multiplication of presents into a single, streamlined sequence) will, in turn “render the present past”just as death provides a completed form for a life that is, until that point, unfixable and multitudinous potentiality.²⁰ The Pasolini fragment closes with the insistence that, “It is therefore absolutely necessary to die, because, so long as we live, we have no meaning, and the language of our lives . . . is untranslatable; a chaos of possibilities, a search for relations and meanings without resolution. . . Death effects an instantaneous montage of our lives.”²¹ As curator Katherine Brinson has noted, Vo’s studied interest in questions of death, and his deconstruction of the binary that divides life from death, appear resonant with Pasolini’s conclusion. In her reading of Death Sentence, Brinson remarks, “In an oeuvre predicated on a belief in the incommensurable vagaries of lived experience and the flickering instability of the self, death finally arrests this ceaseless flux and is a perpetual, countering presence in the work.”²² Death functions in two competing ways here. Death is that which arrests the arc of a particular life, but it is also a kind of continuance: what Brinson describes as this “perpetual, countering presence” of death in the mix with the living.²³

By refusing to provide a “unified narrative” of Vo’s practice by way of an exegetical text for Where the Lions Are, Ault sought to avoid the trap of fixing or killing the work. Instead, she provided Vo with a text (or a sequence of five texts) that could continue to live and work for him: “My hope is that ‘Death Sentence’ is something that Danh continues to read and delve into” as the text’s meanings transform and take on new life across different spaces, times, contexts, and utilizations.²⁴ So doing, it is inevitable that old meanings might be destroyed or killed off, making way for new points of connection and entry to emerge. This is a process of living, where death and destruction are not anathemas to life, but “a perpetual, countering presence” within it. ²⁵ This might suggest that when Vo exposed Death Sentence to the destructive rays of the sun, his aim was not to slay the work. In some ways, by becoming a rarefied art object acquired by MoMA and held in its collection, the piece had already been killed. By exposing it to the sun, giving it a new purpose, and giving it away to a new public, Vo sought to give it a new use, to find new life, as his work often does, in a seemingly dead and inert thing.

Vo once remarked to me, “The art world thinks I destroy things.”²⁶ He didn’t finish the thought, but I inferred that he understood this particular “unified narrative” of his practice as incomplete, if not inaccurate. Death and destruction are not, within his work, finite or conclusory. They are not the period delimiting the end of a (death) sentence. They are, instead, a part of the ceaselessly unfolding project of living. Rather, and in keeping with something Sigmund Freud once argued, death here does not run counter to life, so much as it is the realization of life’s aim.²⁷ That is, living is, always and at the same time, a process of dying, and all living matter ultimately comes from, and returns to, the pregnant nothingness that we sometimes call “death.” To put a work of art to use in the present, and presence of the living, as Vo often does, is to risk altering it and wearing it out, if not rendering it vulnerable to death and destruction. But Vo’s work is often an invitation to experience a shift in perspective. Seen otherwise, what appears to be destruction might be an invitation to come to terms with the fact that destruction and death are perpetual companions to creation, life, and the art of living on. As we are all sentenced to die, a death sentence need not necessarily be the opposite of living. As Death Sentence reminds us, it is the art of living with death that gives the act of living on meaning, substance, and stakes. A death sentence, in other words, is a precondition for More Life. It is the negotiation of this contradiction that gives life, and perhaps art, its force of power in the world.

(Boundless thanks to Danh Vo, Julie Ault, Marta Lusena, Binghao Wong, Susan Homer, and Daisy Matias (for excellent research support).

The post A <i>Death Sentence</i> Is a Precondition for More Life appeared first on post.

You are packing what you need for a ten-day journey to a foreign country into a carry-on backpack. What do you carry with you?

Rirkrit Tiravanija’s answer was several ziplock bags of curry paste, spices, and dried ingredients for a Thai rice dish, plastic utensils, a can opener, coconut milk, plastic bottles of oil and sauce, tea, an Open Country Campware five-piece mess kit, a camping stove, and a folded paper map made of photocopies (fig. 1). These all fit into a roughly thirty-liter Eastern Mountain Sports black canvas backpack. Untitled (rucksack installation) (1993) was created as a study for Untitled (From Barajas . . . to Reina Sofia) (1994).¹ The later work—Tiravanija’s contribution to a group show at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid—took from the 1993 study the portability of dry ingredients in order to prepare meals on the road. Over ten days, Tiravanija traveled from the airport to the museum on a bike equipped with cooking supplies, stopping to cook food for people along the way, and supplementing the dry ingredients in his rucksack with fresh ones purchased locally.² The six editions of Untitled (rucksack installation), each carrying a slightly different set of alimentary items, were never actually used to prepare meals.³ This peeved Tiravanija, who noted that the rucksack “has to have a history for it to become something.”⁴ In 1995, he encouraged the director and chief curator of the Walker Art Center to take the museum’s purchased edition out of storage, to “put it on their backs and walk out into the garden and make a meal with it.”⁵

The work began with a suggestion from gallerist Helga Maria Klosterfelde to create an edition of works related to Tiravanija’s itinerant lifestyle, “always on the road, always in planes, hospitality/service with Thai food.”⁶ The concept of being Thai abroad was familiar to Tiravanija. In a 2004 interview, he said, “All work that I have ever made is about the position I am in the Western world, which I was trying to understand.”⁷ Having grown up the son of a diplomat, Tiravanija has said that when he moved from Bangkok to Ontario at age nineteen, “I knew nothing about my own culture.”⁸ His subsequent work drove toward “getting [him]self back” and untangling his “subconsciously colonized” upbringing and American Catholic education. Through his practice, Tiravanija acquires and unpacks cultural baggage using some of the most widely known, even clichéd, foreign afterimages of Thai culture: food and Buddhism.⁹ This article takes up the gift of food in Untitled (rucksack installation) to reframe Tiravanija’s artistic practice through the lens of Buddhism.

Emptying a Rucksack

Feel the weight of your backpack, filled with necessary items for your travels. Now, take everything out and give it away. Your backpack still has something in it: emptiness.

Tiravanija’s itinerant lifestyle and meandering path to empty his rucksack in Untitled (From Barajas . . . to Reina Sofia) mirrors that of wandering Buddhist monks. The Thai word บรรพชิต (monk/clergyman) derives from pabbajati in the scriptural language of Theravada Buddhism, meaning “to leave home and wander about as mendicant or to give up the world.”¹⁰ The constant movement of monks frees them from earthly attachment and creates the opportunity for laypeople to gain merit through giving.¹¹ Instead of cooking tools, wandering monks carry on their person eight necessary items (บริขาร), including a robe, razor, sewing needle, and alms bowl (บาตร). Instead of begging for rice, Tiravanija cooks it for others.

Tiravanija’s generosity has been analyzed extensively with respect to European philosophies of the gift and alternative economies of reciprocity.¹² In the 1990s, when Tiravanija first began his now-iconic performances with food, critics were quick to contrast Tiravanija’s gifts of food with the artwork-as-commodity, pointing to his creation of a “familial atmosphere” as a haven from the rapidly commercializing art world.¹³ Tempering such notions of conviviality, Janet Kraynak has taken up Marcel Mauss’s theory of the gift as a pre-evolution of economic commodities, arguing that participants in Tiravanija’s work are swept into a sort of market with a predetermined “system of reciprocal obligations.”¹⁴ Miwon Kwon, building on Kraynak, assumes Mauss’s view that “there is no such thing as a free gift or entirely disinterested, uncalculated giving.”¹⁵ According to a 2019 interview, however, Tiravanija saw the relational conditions elicited through his work existing “without judgment, precondition, and demands,” a contrast, he says, to the relational aesthetics of “Western artists.”¹⁶ For Tiravanija, these artists’ emphasis on aesthetics distinguishes the spectator from the art, producing “objects,” as opposed to “a way of living.”¹⁷ Maussian analyses of Tiravanija’s work, rooted in a Western perspective of economy and exchange, run counter to the role of gifting in Theravada Buddhism, Tiravanija’s self-proclaimed spiritual tradition.¹⁸

One of the primary practices of Buddhism is dana (generous giving, religious gift). According to eminent religious scholar Diana Eck, dana’s “moral energy runs against the grain of Mauss’s theory.”¹⁹ Unlike the gifting practices in most modern societies, dana—gifts from laypeople to worthy receivers (usually renouncers of worldly things)—is definitionally nonreciprocal. It is in this nonreciprocity that dana’s spiritual power lies.²⁰ In Thailand, the most common form of dana is giving rice to monks, and if the gift is freely given (without desire for reciprocity), it makes merit toward one’s spiritual advancement.²¹ Crucially, “if even an unreciprocated gift is motivated by the desire for merit, then none will result.”²² As the public gains merit through dana, the monks—dispossessed of material goods—are (at least symbolically) dependent on the gifts begged each morning for survival.²³ Any notion of debt between renouncers and donors is neutralized by “the universal and impersonal currency—merit,” which is karmically returned to givers and which renouncers elicit through mass ritual.²⁴ Buddhist gifts, then, operate via “individual donors and no individual recipients.”²⁵ Monks and laypeople are systemically intertwined in a bilateral, existentially dependent relationship of givers and receivers of food, merit, and ultimately, spiritual liberation. Seen in this light, Tiravanija’s gifts of rice may not be setting up economies of reciprocity under capitalism but rather a way to make merit through dana.

One might label the bilateral giving between laypeople and renouncers as “reciprocity,” but it transcends the capitalist notion of economic exchange and even “symbolic capital”²⁶ in that its process, substance, and ultimate goal is not the circulation of value, but rather emptiness. Scholar of Buddhism Wendi Adamek asserts that “for Buddhists, merit/gift is sustained by emptiness.”²⁷ This is because for Buddhists, emptiness is a state of realizing the inherent mutuality of all things, whereas, for Jacques Derrida (building on Mauss), interconnectedness comes through exchange.²⁸ The goal of emptiness is grounded in the Buddha’s teaching that suffering is born from “our propensity for craving and grasping, our attempt to hold on tight to the world.”²⁹ If givers hold ambitions of reciprocity, or recipients do not fulfill the requirement of “being unwilling” to receive the gift, they risk suffering somatic and karmic harm for their greed.³⁰ One can imagine Tiravanija’s rucksack getting emptier over the ten-day journey, the artist’s physical and spiritual load lightened through gifting to others.

Applying Mauss to Tiravanija’s work leaves little room for the use value of a truly free gift, which lies in the negative space or emptiness it leaves behind. In contrast to the collection and preservation logic of museums like the Walker that house—or hoard—Tiravanija’s works, Buddhist renouncers must give up material possessions. Additionally, renouncers train to have an empty mind (จิตว่าง) that is open to receive teachings: an immeasurable gift.³¹ This wisdom likens the value of an empty mind to that of an empty bowl, which lies in its capacity.³² Tiravanija attributes his own empty mind (and poor memory) to “the speed of travel,” and his Buddhist philosophy “of living now, not in the future or past.”³³ Tiravanija’s cultivation of an empty mind gives rise to site-specific works that adapt to foreign spaces and unfold into the undetermined present. It also supports his practice of gift-giving. For Derrida, self-awareness of one’s giving (and the resultant self-congratulation or desire for reward) destroys a gift, and so “absolute forgetting” can preserve it.³⁴ In addition to the exercise of forgetting, Tiravanija’s practice exercises another requirement of dana: detachment from the fruits of one’s actions.³⁵ Curator Laura Hoptman described Tiravanija’s release of ownership over the outcome of a 1997 work at MoMA in terms of “reticence approaching self-abnegation,” in which he left the substance of the artwork “up to chance.”³⁶ This approximates the Buddhist principle of non-determination, which Tiravanija also reflects in his contentedness to “land wherever” in his travels.³⁷ Practicing freedom from attachment and expectation, Tiravanija’s non-controlling attitude toward his work and its outcomes positions him as a giver of dana.

Tiravanija’s work is often analyzed in terms of “community,” but Buddhists don’t give dana to strengthen community.³⁸ Dana should be given to an “other” (Buddhist or not), contrasting with reciprocal gifts given to “one’s own people.”³⁹ In this way, anthropologist James Laidlaw contends that “impersonality, if it is a feature of the commodity . . . is equally a feature of the free gift,” not a point of difference, as cursory readings of Mauss may suggest.⁴⁰ Tiravanija’s gift is nothing personal. This Buddhist reading of gifting contrasts with Kraynak’s suggestion that “to read Tiravanija’s art as a gift is to suggest that it potentially undermines the premise of alterity.”⁴¹ Rather than undermining otherness, Tiravanija gives to those who must be definitionally “other.” Tiravanija, with the religious background to understand the perils of adopting an economic attitude toward dana, would not dare enter the process of gifting with reciprocal ambitions, even that of “building community.” Indeed, Laidlaw details how rituals of dana in Jainism, a related Indic religion, go to great lengths to avoid the creation of social bonds. This is because such bonds “preclude the transcendence of temporal causal relations” necessary to achieve the ultimate spiritual goal: enlightenment.⁴² Although a Buddhist interpretation of Tiravanija’s gifts releases them from the commodity structure, I argue that this act does not form kinship, “family,” or “community,” but rather emptiness and the freedom of nonattachment.

Still, like any traveler, Tiravanija must reckon with the friction between one system of value and another. Here, the goals of emptiness and self-obliteration come up against those of consumption, advancement, and fullness, the latter of which risks reducing human interaction to economic relationships. Tiravanija’s rucksack meals in Madrid, Spain, were cooked for passersby who were likely strangers to him and Buddhism. Diana Eck points out that Thais daily encounter “saffron-robed monks with begging bowls, reminding us by their voluntary asceticism of spiritual values that cannot be gained from our busy lives of wealth and work”—values of nonattachment and dana that are abstract for Western urban audiences.⁴³ The slippages between a gift’s intention, execution, and reception threaten to taint dana, which requires all three to align on the value of emptiness. Participants’ acceptance of the artist’s food, traditionally meant for those with nothing to give back, embodies a lesson in the “divide between greed and need.”⁴⁴ The worthiness of dana recipients determines its moral value, making the gift potentially poisonous to those who—eager to exploit its economic value—take more than they need.⁴⁵ When recipients frame free gifts through the materialistic lens of either a suspicious debt trap or an opportunity for exploitation, they miss the point: if a gift fills a need, it does not add to your load—it leaves you freer.

Using a Rucksack in Thailand Today

You are packing again, but not for travel. Add to your backpack the tools you need to build a world in which you feel at home. In other words, a world where you are free.

In a 2004 interview, Tiravanija said it is “the contemporary Thai artist’s struggle to be a Buddhist and an artist.”⁴⁶ In 2019, Tiravanija noted that he sees his work as a part of his “everyday spiritual practice and life,” rather than making “art” as such.⁴⁷ Untitled (rucksack installation) embodies Tiravanija’s integration of artistic and spiritual practice. It packs elements of Buddhist philosophy into Tiravanija’s travels between hubs of the global contemporary art world. Tiravanija’s rucksack, however, may take on an additional meaning in Thailand today, one that reveals the artist’s distance from his home country.

Contrast Tiravanija’s rucksack with the backpacks shown in the March 2022 exhibition Battle Wounds at Cartel Artspace in Bangkok, Thailand (fig. 2). The backpacks and accompanying protest ephemera were used by political youth group Talufa (ทะลุฟ้า,) at the protests near Bangkok’s Democracy Monument in August 2021.⁴⁸ Like Untitled (rucksack installation), the protesters’ backpacks carried tools to make and share meals, including ladles, tongs, and spatulas. Whereas Tiravanija’s rucksack might hold the tools of a Buddhist traveler giving without desire, the backpacks in Battle Wounds equipped occupiers to hold space in the days-long “mob” protests for democratic reforms. Beginning in 2020, participants in these student-led protests cooked not for passing strangers or renouncers, but to sustain a politically grounded community that stayed put in the movement for a new national future. Along with kitchenware, their backpacks were stuffed with slingshots, gas masks, and political slogans.⁴⁹ The occupiers used their backpacks to make temporary homes in public space rather than traverse it itinerantly.

By exhibiting the protest ephemera of young Thais rooted in their country, Battle Wounds offered an alternative perspective on the necessary items and methods of Thai contemporary artists and activists. Their backpacks, carrying the weight of the tools to build a future, do not leave enough empty space for dana. Understandably, the relationship between Buddhism and art is a defining question for Tiravanija—a traveler whose practice of nonattachment creates a home in the present moment. Taken in the context of 2020–22 Bangkok, this question does not, however, characterize “the contemporary Thai artist’s struggle” to shape the future of the nation. Uncannily, this contrast reflects the very phenomenon Tiravanija addresses in his art: the literal and cultural distance between his itinerant life and Thailand.

Untitled (rucksack installation) offers us insight into what it means to be a Thai traveler who has lived abroad most of their life. I have argued that the work embodies the Buddhist principles of dana, nonattachment, and non-determination, rarely gleaned in readings of Tiravanija’s artistic practice. In giving freely to Madrileños, Tiravanija opened the door to a new way of relating to the world and each other: one in which we give not to fulfill a debt, but for the lightness of being empty. Removed from their culturally specific contexts, however, these Buddhist principles are ungrounded from their spiritual and material use. Indeed, this friction and distortion in communication is the ocean in which travelers crossing philosophical traditions learn to swim. But such misunderstandings and lost meanings might attend the work’s reception even in present-day Thailand. As Battle Wounds suggests, for many young Thais, nonattachment is affordable only with the luxury of distance, or the ability to make the road, rather than a nation, your home. Ultimately, Untitled (rucksack installation) offers a Buddhist solution to Tiravanija’s impossible journey toward “getting [him]self back”: give away, and let go. Tiravanija’s work echoes the Buddhist values underpinning Thai society while untethering them from contemporary Thai geopolitics and culture. It reminds us of what a traveler cannot take with them when they leave their homeland. There are some things a rucksack cannot carry.

Acknowledgments: The editorial brilliance of Wong Binghao, Will Seaton, and Elizabeth Keto provided the directional light to grow the article into its current form. Without the confidence and inspiration of Chanon Kenji Praepipatmongkol and Thanavi Chotpradit, this article would never have been seeded. Thank you for your priceless gifts.

The post What We Cannot Carry appeared first on post.

By clicking on the images, readers can access interactive games, lists, videos, and social media activities that have been designed and/or documented by the artists. The first of its kind on post, this commission contributes to C-MAP Asia’s ongoing research and discussions about models of cultural work in Southeast Asia.

With lock-downs and slowdowns due to COVID-19 around the world, many arts organizations moved their exhibitions and programming online. This project started with two questions: how can we approach the Internet as a medium, and not just a platform, for artistic work, and how can digital archives generate new research and ideas? I invited two artists to collaborate on this project: S. Yi Yao Chao, a librarian at Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong, and Poklong Anading, an artist who has been involved in the Manila contemporary art scene for more than two decades and whose works feature in the Roberto Chabet Archive, the Green Papaya Art Projects Archive, and the Manila Artist-Run Spaces Archive. These three collections at Asia Art Archive feature many of today’s well-known contemporary artists from the Philippines. A spirit of collective aspiration runs through these archives, and seeded this collaborative project. We had many conversations one-on-one and as a group over half a year: to learn about each other’s practices, to explore and meander through the collections, and to find space for collective thinking and imagination.

—Chương-Đài Võ

Dear Chuong-Dai, with a u in front of an o,

Poklong and I don’t know if there is a story, or if we are the ones to tell it. Maybe there are multiple stories and ways to evoke a happening. To enter and reenter. But I like sitting with the ambiguities of what has been documented. In my first encounter with Poklong, we talked about prolific residencies, not remembering. We talked about documenting performance. Honestly, when we documented for our friends, we didn’t know what the documentation would be used for. Documentation is buried in hard drives, revealed online in an archive, with many peoples’ backs and blurred-out nuances.

What and when do we see decisions for retractions?

As informative as an archive should be, we want to focus, or be out of focus, on the ambiguities. Moments when we recognize revisions and changes, or just chase unrealized thoughts. I think we don’t care much for what happened, or feel the need to verify these revisions. But it’s the act of someone, a distant hand and their pencil marks, that remains on a work in process.

We share notes on Wednesday nights. Even without a time difference, the night catches Poklong earlier, while mine is an ultramarine blue. Our talks are very long, with many sidetracks and unused notes in duration, like experiencing and setting up makeshift screenings.

Sometimes we capture the impression of our dialogue in forms of attentive collages and drawings, photographs, videos with a small lens in our phones and multiple sunsets and moons, some telephone lines in between, new sprouts of plants drawing lines and spirals of a snail that was a pest and now traces of a pet’s pace.

An intermediate proposal,

S.

Written on some non-immediate days

***

[S.] Routinely through dispersed digitized folders, we began by sharing what I saw in the archive and what Poklong recalls, traces of himself and his friends. In Quezon City from 2004 to 2005, Big Sky Mind hosted two residencies: the inaugural Big Sky Mind Annual I¹ and the closing 18th Avenue: Art and Life.² There is some photo documentation that is out of focus but artfully captured³ of Poklong and MM Yu’s artist talk during the first residency. It is inconsistent at any angle but eye level. There is no overview. It’s interpersonal: There is a shared living and studio space. There are many ambiguities. Maybe we can only describe, maybe there is something new. We are not going back or preserving or recalling this moment. We are meeting in the present. There’s a meeting at 7:30 p.m. on Skype. With a bad connection, you move to a designated spot, the kitchen.

[Poklong] What came to my mind after seeing that short documentation was the plastic fillers that I use to store printed documentation for my portfolio. The documentation that leads to a video of the collaboration with MM Yu shows how PowerPoint was used to present artwork. Since the software has become a common ground for presenting work on the computer, I thought of hanging the plastic fillers on my studio walls, to catch traces of dust accumulated through time. Instead of showing physical art documentation, there would be physical traces of dust—a collection of my activities in the studio. I reflected over some questions for this project: What’s an archive? What are these records for? Where did it all start? Because of its grid-like pattern, these plastic fillers resemble the 300 Drawings of [Roberto] Chabet, which was the inaugural exhibition at Big Sky Mind in 1999, six years before I hung the plastic fillers on my studio walls.

Alternative artist-run spaces thrived in the contemporary art community of 1990s and early 2000s Manila. As an artist who has participated in some exhibitions at these spaces and platforms, for this collaborative piece with Sam and Chuong-Dai, I gathered some material on selected group exhibitions held in these spaces. The process of archiving and filling in the gaps is an integral part of documenting. This has led me to continue collecting unrealized ideas and aspirations from the artists who were running these spaces for a project called AVoidWork, an audio-video compilation that uses video as a tool for expression. As part of my process, I ask to visit the artist and record their voice while they share their unrealized ideas. I then combine the recorded audio with video footage I took that relates to their ideas and their immediate environment while they were sharing their ideas. In this project, the idea is the actual work. Some of the ideas that they shared were related to the sustainability of their previous spaces, programs that they wanted to accomplish, and other ideas that they conceived after the closure of their spaces.

[S.] Sometimes Poklong and I talk about making lists as notes from our meetings. Other times it’s a drawing game generator to escape and randomize the list at the length of a waterfall. Sometimes we watch movies or documentaries about plants. Connected are loose leaves. Asia Art Archive’s collections are organized into a tree structure, a metaphor, a network in a cloud that’s actually in Singapore. There are fallen leaves on the floor and we draw them. We make pots and the materials we use sometimes make us allergic and overwhelm us.

[Poklong] As Sam and I moved the conversation forward, these lists grew, seemingly endless and ambiguous. These ideas gradually conceived as I contemplated the artist residencies I had attended. A week at Freies Museum Berlin, Germany, 2010; 38 days at Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill, Graz, Austria, 2010; 26 days at Cité internationale de Arts, Paris, 2014; and 16 days at Centre Intermondes, La Rochelle, France, 2014. Towards the sky, it seems that the branches of the tree are cracks when looking up from underneath. I would use these images and scrape on the backside of the mirror and make it into dining tables that reminded me of manhole covers. I thought about what was underneath these connections of human activities—the aftermath of eating, drinking, communicating, gathering—where all human activities flow: the sewage that is covered by manholes as if a reverse mirror. Some questions came to mind: What are artist residencies for? What are the connections between the place where I was and where I am now?

[S.] In the Roberto Chabet Archive, the artist Yolanda Laudico (Yoli) hangs banana leaves in a grid on a wall⁴ and exposes photosynthesized paper to light as a way to draw.⁵ There is an Acer cappadocicum by a pathway near Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong, where people hide for a smoke break. If you can spot it, there are 2 papier-maché leaves that mark the pressing of the flowerpots for an Asparagus setaceus and a “left hand aromatic” 左手香 office plant.

[Poklong] Drawing with light is what photography literally means. I am curious about the idea of how leaves can be like a lightproof box for a pinhole camera, where they capture light during photosynthesis, producing food for the plant. Like our list-less page, the ideas and notes that go on and on can be written or drawn on leaves as additional insight, feeding the whole plant, the whole archive. A cross-reference to this idea is Gary-Ross Pastrana’s early work at Big Sky Mind about leaves and manuscripts, The Fall of Meaning (2000).

A hand may resemble a vessel—as if that of our own body, a host. An artist residency is also a host. Underneath the urban landscape and dwellings is a man-made channel hidden from plain sight. The leaves capture light, just like a hand can be seen and overlooked.

[S.] I don’t know how to end this text as I’m walking. Maybe in living there is no end but sameness, walking the same route but seeing something different. A rearranging. A new leaf growing. Another one withering. Feeding some new pests and pets.

[Poklong] There are certain things that we act on without knowing how we would translate them into words. This was what we sought to address with the idea behind missing vocabularies, a group exhibition I organized at Green Papaya. Gathering with friends to have a group show together reminds me of Tom Marioni’s work The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends Is the Highest Form of Art.⁶ In our current era of accelerated production and social-media interaction, our ways of interacting with each other have changed. When we wanted to drink with friends before, we would hang out at gallery openings. Nowadays, my friends will send messages and invite me for e-numan (from the Tagalog word inuman), which translates “to drink on Zoom online meetings.” It seems like other informal acts of exchange and collaboration may never happen again like how it was before.

On September 21st of 2003, during the anniversary of the 1972 martial law declaration in the Philippines, a group of artists including MM Yu, Lena Cobangbang, Louie Cordero, Jayson Oliveria, Jun Sabayton, and I held the first iteration of the food pest project at a canteen at Big Sky Mind’s Cubao 18th Avenue compound. All of us, with the exception of Jun Sabayton, were in residence there at the time. It was an act of coming together on a day that signaled the start of one of the darkest periods in Philippine history, a time when even the most basic civil liberties, like the act of gathering with people, could easily become suspect. We invited people to come and bring or prepare any dish or food they wanted to, and to share those dishes with everyone. For the second iteration of food_pest, now during a pandemic in which movements are restricted and meeting with people is almost impossible (and under a corrupt and dictatorial Philippine government as in 1972), in earnest solidarity, we are inviting people on Instagram to share a food recipe: it can be a text, a video, an audio recording, a series of drawings. And if anyone would like to send a prepared dish to someone, we would gladly facilitate the delivery to their intended recipient.

[S.] People believe archives are depositories for potential afterlives. Ephemera are saved for make-shift and guerilla-style events to be revisited. From a lived experience to a document, to a collision of both and maybe something new.

[Poklong] The past can make sense of the future. Archiving as how we are with social media has become our palpable presence. The depository list of ephemera is timeless. We are uncertain when it will end or start anew again. As Umberto Eco said, “We like lists because we don’t want to die.”⁷

[S.] Forgetting or a list and very fragmented processes to remind

No structure

Noninvasive and just focusing on the material

Looked

less on the subject and the narrative

They are just spaces and loose fragments

Residues and brief pausings

(A nap, a walk and this lake which isn’t the same river but just a body of water)

Remove and rearrange all the labels into loose leaves

In passing

The influence of material—here are many and all together. In looking through the archive, I can see remains, bits and pieces. Its navigation is vast and open. Its fragments can be rearranged and have a different orientation each time. We write to remember and we draw to mark where we left off so we can forget.

What I have to say changes but there are some pinpoints . . . it is really not important and preferably disposable when it becomes materialized. I don’t want to influence or guide you too much. That will distract you from getting lost. Don’t trust me too much. I don’t remember and I know in bits.

[Poklong] Like plants, ideas grow. It begins with the process of seeding, flowing in our sensory nerves, and expanding like branches of a tree or sprouts like a rhizome on the ground. It withers away as our memory may remember anything or may forget. Our body’s response is either to make a move or make a mark / unmarked.

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1. Taparaco Myth

For the last three decades, each time we lost a family member in my parents’ native Taiwan, a moth would appear in our home in California, before we had received any form of telecommunication about the death. Over the years, I have discovered that many cultures share this phenomenon of receiving insect messengers: from the monarch butterflies, which travel on the Day of the Dead from Mexico to Canada, and Peru’s blue flies, which swarm over the photograph of the soon-to-be deceased, to the grasshopper’s bone-chilling night song in the mountains. Perhaps the most infamous of all is the Andean taparaco, the Quechua word for a brown moth with wing patterns resembling an owl’s eyes; an elder once told me that in order to break the death spell and reverse your destiny, you must pierce the gaze of the taparaco with a needle. In 2007, following these signs led me to embark on a two-year-long auto-ethnographic travel-research project Taparaco Myth, which I began by searching for family members who had immigrated to Argentina in the seventies. In Argentina, I was befuddled by gendered and racialized encounters that highlighted the intersecting fault lines of the collective imaginary and the historical legacy of “othering.” Despite being born and raised in the US, my sense of belonging in the Americas was constantly challenged. I was expected to simply be a china, chinita, or Oriental from the Far East (“Oriental” is still used interchangeably with “Asian” among Spanish speakers). On some occasions I was brutally interrogated ¿Qué sos? What are you?, greeted with a namaste bow, expected to demonstrate tai chi on demand, or else asked which kung-fu movie I had acted in. Furthermore, given the particular relationship that the Chinese have with my parents’ Taiwanese homeland, the chinita blanket label unsettled me, even if the colloquial definition of chinita encompasses all Asian women. “Chinita” haunted me no matter how many times Spanish speakers assured me that it was a form of endearment absent of derogatory connotations. Determined to uncover the history underlining this collective imaginary of Asia in Latin America, I retraced coolie geography to learn about undocumented Chinese Peruvian stories, and for many legs of the journey, was accompanied by Colectivo Zoom, a resourceful team of anthropologists and historians dedicated to documenting underground social movements. While much scholarly research has been conducted on Lima’s Chinese Peruvian and Japanese Peruvian communities, little is known about the fate of the Asian migrants in the interior regions of Peru. Even though Asian presence in the Americas can be traced back to the sixteenth century, this history is largely erased from the official narrative of the Americas. Taparaco Myth’s attempt to flesh out the bits of marginalized history of rural Asian/Americas only threaded together a microscopic portion of the fragmented diasporic web. Who are the real chinos versus the imaginary chinos? What global political economic inequities led to diasporization? What xenophobic histories were responsible for the formation of racial stereotypes? Where do Asians in the Americas belong if they are forever perceived as foreigners? What traditions have Peruvians of Asian descent preserved? What transcultural processes have occurred over the last six generations—and, furthermore, what might they look, sound, taste, and feel like? In recent years, as more and more Asian Latin Americans have moved to North America or their respective ethnic homelands, how can we adapt a hemispheric vision to understand Asian Americans’ movements across borders, continents, and oceans in a manner that addresses the complex and mobile world that defies the simplistic binaries of North and South America, and Eastern and Western cultures?

2. Chino/na: A Folk-Etymological Wordplay

If the collective imaginary was perceivable by the senses, it would probably be the lemony, floral notes of the Chinese perfume tree, whose elusive aroma comes and goes like an apparition. From this evocative scent, the New World was conceived, fertilized by rumors of an exotic and resource-rich Asia, motivating Europeans to set sail. Columbus’s mistaking the Americas for India destined them to become the imaginary grounds of Asia, which is evident when dissecting the folk etymology of the Spanish words chino, or china (in Spanish grammar, the ending of the adjective or noun changes depending on the gender of the subject described). This word takes on innumerable significations, varying from one region to another and often reflecting historical realities as well as abstractions. An expression that sums it up is “cuento chino,” which translates as “Chinese story,” and is used to describe a convoluted lie, tall tale, or fable. Within Peru, the term chino, or china, is applicable to a person with Asian or Amerindian features or to a person of both African and indigenous descent. It may also be a term of endearment between lovers, a fifty-cent coin, or even the Peruvian presidents Juan Velasco Alvarado and Alberto Fujimori. It encompasses everything from children in Colombia, the wife of a gaucho, a person of low social class, or a servant in Central America to orange juice or soda in Puerto Rico and a ladybug in Chile. It can also describe contradictory physical characteristics, such as someone with straight hair in Cuba, someone with curly hair in Mexico, or someone who is hairless or naked in Venezuela. To further complicate the matter, china in Quechua means young woman, a definition that bears no origin in Spanish. And the obsession with eyes! There are many derivatives of, and/or expressions with, chino that allude to the eyes. Let’s start with a salsa song titled “Ojos Chinos” (Chinese Eyes) by the band El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico that serenades the chinita’s eyes. And a less flattering example is the verb chinear, which describes squinting one’s eyes really hard, until they are thin slits, in order to better see something. On countless occasions and without invitation or provocation, Peruvians would approach me and say, “You are china” while gesturing up and outward near the eyes to emphasize my ojos achinados, or “Chinese-style” eyes, or else ojos arasgados, meaning almond-shaped and slanted eyes. Another synonym for chinita is jaladita, derived from the verb jalar, which means to pull, and when said, is often tinged with yellow-face insinuations. Additionally, fumar una china means to smoke cannabis, in reference to the smoker’s puffy, small eyes.

3. Chifa: Asian/Americas’ Sazón

The first time I ate chifa, Chinese-Peruvian food, was at La Union in Queens, New York. The restaurant owner proudly shared that he was part Cantonese and part Peruvian as he served me fried dumplings that he called mariposas, the Spanish word for “butterflies.” When I first arrived in Lima, I thought the airport taxi driver was driving me through Chinatown because every other street corner had a chifa (the restaurant and the food are both called chifa). The ubiquitous presence of chifa directly reflects the deep Chinese roots in Peru. Chifa is a loanword from Cantonese that means to eat rice. It is said that plantation owners always heard the coolies say “chifa” when they were eating, and thus assumed that it was the name of the cuisine. Today, chifa is fully embraced as part of Peru’s culinary tradition.

One time on a microbus in Lima, when I requested to get off at a stop, the bus driver instead skipped my stop, sped ahead, and then arbitrarily halted in front of a chifa. Perhaps he thought that I was hungry. When I moved into a new neighborhood, a well-meaning neighbor asked me at which chifa I was employed. Strangely enough, a verb derived from chifa is chifar, which means to eat chifa, but colloquially means to have sex with a woman.

4. El Chino—Loreto—Peru

Despite being a city that is inaccessible by land, Iquitos is surprisingly cosmopolitan and harbors a sizable Chinese Peruvian population. There is an active Beneficencia China, where the community gathers on the weekends for mah-jongg. Take a walk through Mercado Belen and you will discover that a majority of the businesses are Chinese Peruvian–owned. While we stayed with Colectivo Zoom member Joel Lozano’s relatives, his aunt “La Negra” and her husband “El Chino” (who are neither black nor Chinese), we met locals from Televisión Amazónica, who knew how to find the village of El Chino. Together, we piled into a crowded pecamari (a motorized canoe with a roof). We navigated up the Tahuayo River, a snaking river that became a chrome surface mirroring our images back to us with lush vegetation in the background. Did the two escaping coolies also travel up these enchanting waterways? I hypothesized about what we might encounter in El Chino. A long-lost Chinese colony? Or perhaps a village that has nothing at all to do with the Chinese? If residents of El Chino were not ethnically Chinese, would they still be chinos? As night fell, we began to worry about whether we would ever arrive. Luckily, we discovered that the governor of El Chino, Alberto Gonzalez, was aboard the same pecamari. After I expressed my intention to visit El Chino, he welcomed us to spend the night in the village schoolhouse. At sunrise the governor gathered the residents of El Chino to tell us about the origin of the village: Version I: There used to be only about three houses on these shores. In one of these houses there lived a Chinese man and his family. They kept to themselves. He sold farina and tapioca, and he also owned pigs. Then he disappeared. Must have returned to his country. Version II: He was a Vietnam War refugee who arrived in 1909.Version III: My mother-in-law was his descendant. She told me that due to his war-refugee status, he changed his name from Enrique Chang Yayi to Enrique Huanaquiri to maintain a low profile.Version IV: In the mountains nearby, there is a clan that has strong Chinese facial features. They are all his descendants. As there is no official version of the tale of the first Chinese man to arrive in El Chino, the only documented Asian presence in the village of El Chino is mine: I, Beatrice Glow, was the first “North American chinita” to arrive in this century. Later on I learned that there were several coolies who had escaped to the Amazon, established pioneer colonies, cultivated rice and legumes, and guided early European exploration of the region. It is noteworthy that Antonio Wong Rengifo, the son of a Chinese merchant father and a Peruvian mother, was the first filmmaker of Loreto and he also brought tourism to the region. Similarly, in Selva Central, which lies at the intersection of the highlands and the rain forest, there are endless ginger fields, mandarin orange orchards, and bamboo forests, which attest to the history of the Chinese pioneering the impervious jungles. Sadly, official Peruvian history does not credit the Chinese with making accessible the resource-rich region, as it is inconceivable that the Chinese could bring “civilization” to the jungle. As we were leaving El Chino, we learned that three hours from Iquitos, along the Napo River, is the village El Cantón (Canton). However, its origin is not as mysterious as that of El Chino. El Cantón was founded in the sixties by a Chinese immigrant Juan Tang and his six wives.

5. Teatime

Transcription of Selected Interviews from Mito Taparaco

Translation and transcriptions by Beatrice Glow

[IQUITOS]

Aurelio Tang Ramírez: I’ve always wanted to know about my roots, is it not true? Not to live just to live, and die just to rest, but instead to verify and find out where we come from . . .

[IQUITOS]

Ana Isabel Rioza Sui: I am Ana Isabel Rioza Sui, now de Liao [married name]. Rioza Sui was my maiden name. I cannot tell you more because I don’t know more, that is all. When I was a little girl, my grandmother passed away . . . perhaps we could have asked my mother, but now, no . . . no, my mother no longer responds. Now, Jorge, look at the señorita and tell her your name and how old you are.

Jorge Liao Estrella: My name is Jorge . . .

A: Your complete name.

J: Jorge Liao Estrella, and I am eighty-five years old going on eighty-six years old on the twenty-fifth of May. Well, my father is from China, from Canton.

A: Tell her . . . tell the señorita how your father wanted to send you to China after you finished primary school.

J: That . . .

A: Tell her how your father was going to send you to China . . .

J: Ah . . .

A: When Jorge finished primary school, his father was going to send him to China, and when he bought the tickets for two of his sons to go to China, all of his stores caught on fire, and so they didn’t travel. They were going to go to China to study how to be suicide pilots—yup, to be suicide pilots.

J: Yes, we couldn’t go because the fire burned everything. We had brothers we did not know in China.

A: And because of the fire, his father no longer was able to send them and became demoralized due to the loss. How was he going to be able to send them, to provide for them, and to take care of them? So they canceled the trip.

J: We gave up and my mother . . .

A: And because of this, Jorge started to work at a young age, at seventeen years old. Aye, suicide pilots, ha-ha!

Beatrice: Against Japan?

J: Yes, against Japan

A: Ha-ha, for THAT reason his father wanted to send them—to be SUICIDE PILOTS!

B: For what . . . ?

J: To learn aviation! There were these pilots who would fall . . . Rrrrrrrrrrrrrr—they would crash and then get run over . . . pilots . . . [chuckles]

[IQUITOS]

César: I am called César Ayun Liao Estrella. I was born in 1936, on July 19, 1936. I am of Chinese descent. And here in Peru, we call the descendants of Peruvian and Chinese people born in Peru tusan. Here, we say tusan. My mother is Peruvian and my father is Chinese. They brought me to get baptized; they prepared me, and my sister took me to the church. And when they were about to baptize me, the priest asked me for my name, and my sister said, “His name is Ayun Liao Estrella.” “What?!” said the priest. “THAT is his name?” exclaimed the priest. “Yes, Father, that is his name,” my sister responded. The priest said, “But that is the name of the devil! I cannot baptize him with that name because it is the name of the devil.” So my sister asked, “Well, Father, what should we do?” The priest answered, “Well, that name will be his second name. We are going to call him César!” César. So with that name, I was baptized.

[IQUITOS]

Aurelio Tang Ramírez: Well, I was born in 1941. My father came from China during the thirties in search of fortune, like the majority of the Chinese. He came from Canton, and here he found his fortune. In 1943 or 1944, he returned to China because he had left a family there. I stayed here with my three sisters—not here in Iquitos, but in Yurimaguas.

I have always been preoccupied with getting to know my roots, and so I have looked for data on Chinese immigration to Peru, and fundamentally, to the Amazon Basin. The Chinese people arrived in the Amazon Basin via two routes: through Pichis and across the Atlantic. What I do not know is how my father arrived as I was very young and they didn’t tell me. And when he had to leave in 1944 or 1945, I was very young. He wanted to take me to China. I remember very clearly being at the Consulate of Hong Kong, which then was part of the United Kingdom. Well, they fought for me in front of the consul and I had to decide whether to go with my father, or to stay with my mother. I decided to stay with my mother, and so my father bought us a house in Yurimaguas, because my mother was from the Department of San Martin, and my mother, my sisters, and I went to live in Yurimaguas. I grew up there, and I received a secondary education there, and when I finished school, I came to Iquitos.

When I arrived from Yurimaguas in 1962, the older Chinese countrymen invited me to have lunch at a chifa. There were about forty elder Chinese countrymen there. They all started to use chopsticks to eat, but I was a savage from Yurimaguas; I did not know of such things and so asked for a spoon. And one of them reprimanded me, “How can a son of a Chinese man not know how to eat with chopsticks?” Therefore, I learned. In Yurimaguas, I grew up in the jungle, in the forest. My toys were the trees. I climbed the trees, played with the animals, and everything else. Because in those years (I am referring to the fifties and sixties), during my childhood and adolescence, I traversed rivers and lakes. And that was what I have always done until I got sick. The river and the Amazon Basin, all of the great rivers—Marañon, Javari, Napo, Putumayo—I know them. We were with the indigenous communities. From then on, I began acquiring an affection for the grand Amazonian reality, which is greatly unknown to all, because in most educational studies, it is not represented; instead, it is decided in Lima what we should learn.

Yes, in Peru, they always say that humankind came from, well, Asia, or through [Asia]; it is not certain if they are from here. And thus, there are several theories. And I have found verification that humankind came from Asia through various things, for instance through the ceramics from the group Secuoya. A Japanese visitor came to my home with another friend and found a ceramic piece on top of the piano. “Oh, where is this from? This is Japanese!” And I responded, “No, this is from the Secuoya Group, from Alto Napo.” He was surprised. Another thing, the children of Alto Napo, the babies . . . many are born with a birthmark on the buttock, and that is the Mongoloid signature, this friend told me.

Beatrice Glow: I also have it!

A: Oh! Great! There you go! The physiognomy of the Amazonian man . . . he does not have a beard. He is hairless and has slanted eyes. There you go! If you go to the jungle, you will see that those born there . . . that their eyes, their facial features, are Asian. Therefore, there is no doubt about this. This is certain. I know from the facts that I have been collecting.

I’ve always wanted to know about my roots, is it not true? Not to live just to live, and die just to rest, but instead to verify and find out where we come from. And where we are going—to do a bit of metaphysics, no? The world, from where . . . all these things . . . And I share these things with those who want to know. About the Amazonian people . . . ask, please. I have information, I gather information, and I share information.

[I feel] more Loretano, more Loretano than Peruvian, inclusively, because it is quite difficult—the amount of diversity in Peru. My identity is Loretano, of the jungle, because I was born and raised here; I have my beautiful family here, and, here, they will bury me. I wouldn’t change it for anything. I know the coast, the highlands, I have traveled Peru. Perhaps I would have liked Moyobamba, When we were newlyweds, we already had this house; friends told us to go work [with them] and so we traveled through Moyobamba, Trujillo, Chiclayo, to figure out where to stay, and we decided to stay here [in Iquitos].

What we are missing is identity. I, for the Amazonians, detach from everything else, because there is no other place that is better for me.

I admire Chinese culture, and I admire more—thanks to [anthropologist] Isabel Lausent Herrera—that I descend from the Tang dynasty. Isabel gave me some documents, and I have my genealogy chart from the eleventh century, which I will give to you, although I have to look for it. So I admire Chinese culture, for its wisdom, for a lot of things. I do not reject it. I admire things from many other cultures, because at the very least, I want to be, I hope to be, a universal man without barriers, to be how we human beings can attempt to be . . . no? Because we are of flesh and bones, we are all born from the woman; no one has blue blood, we all are red-blooded. Color and religion have separated us at times; these are human limitations, or human stupidities, we are going to say that about certain entities.

[SAN RAMON– CHANCHAMAYO]

Isabel Tam Guevara: Tell her, when did you arrive from China?

German Tam: Huh?

I: When did you arrive from China? Tell her, when did you arrive?

G: Huh?

I: When did you arrive in Peru and where have you been? How was the experience?

G: I arrived in 1930 in Callao, but we were not allowed to disembark the ship. The steamship company asked us if we preferred to go to El Frontón, or to Chile. So we, the boys, said, “No, not to Chile. We’ll go ahead to Frontón.” We stayed in El Frontón for eight days. Eight days later we disembarked in Callao.

I: How long did it take for the boat to arrive in Callao?

G: From Hong Kong to Callao . . . sixty-five days, sixty-five days by steamship.

I: How old were you?

G: Seventeen years old.

I: And where did you go?

G: What?

I: Where did you go to live after Callao?

G: I stayed in Lima to get an immigration card; in Lima there were delays . . . August, September, October . . . December, we were delayed for four months in order to get an immigration card. Afterward I traveled north to Casma . . .

[IQUITOS]

Aurelio Tang Ramírez: I’ve always wanted to know about my roots, is it not true? Not to live just to live, and die just to rest, but instead to verify and find out where we come from . . .

6. Becoming Taparaco

“I’ve always been curious about where we come from and where we are going,” reflected Aurelio Tang Ramírez, as we shared an afternoon in his lively garden in Iquitos, which was teeming with rare orchids and a noisy toucan. After his Chinese father repatriated in the forties, his Peruvian mother raised him in Yurimaguas. It was not until decades later that he received from French anthropologist Isabelle Lausent-Herrera a copy of his family tree, which traces back to a Tang Dynasty government official.

With scarce documentation of rural Asian Latin America, preserving the oral history ensconced within the Chinese Peruvian mestizo matrix was imperative. With Colectivo Zoom, we visited elders in remote areas of Peru. Many of them opened their doors and photo albums to share glimpses of history through their perspectives. I remember Alfonso Shiokey Leon Jho recounting the horror of Chinese workers getting cooked alive in boiling animal fat in Chepen’s soap factory, Jorge Liao Estrella joking about how his father wanted to send him to China to counterattack the Japanese as a Kamikaze pilot, Marco Farfán revealing a Chinese grandmother in his Afro-Peruvian lineage, and Enrique Kamt Nuñez proudly showing me his fake alien ID card, which stated that he was from China despite the fact he had never set foot in China. I had journeyed far away from home only to meet strangers in distant lands who, too, shared nostalgia for places in which they never belonged—be it an island, like Taiwan, or a landmass, like China, these places live forever in our minds as the homelands that never were.

When Señor Antonio Ching Wong entrusted me with the mission to locate his uncle’s grave on his behalf, I suddenly realized that I was becoming a taparaco, linking the living and the dead across geographical distance. The project transcended an initial curiosity about Asian presence in the Americas and extended into the responsibility to give those stories a chance to be heard: Yo soy taparaco. I am a taparaco.

7. Archiving Amnesia

Back in New York, I read Leandro Katz’s The Milk of Amnesia, in which a character named Beatrice travels to South America in search of ruins—and it was written the year I was born. This serendipitous find imbued a deeper sense of the fatefulness of my encounters in Asian Latin America. Now seven years have passed since I set out to uncover 160 years of marginalized history, and I wonder what has happened to those elders with whom I crossed paths? What about that crumbling Beneficiencia China in Lambayeque, which once opened its doors to Chinese immigrants but is now closed to the community due to property disputes between the descendants of the original founders? Are there efforts to preserve that yellowing immigrant registry book? Do the Chinese Peruvians in San Ramon still bury their dead facing westward toward China? The contents of the Migratory Museum I created in the diasporic spirit remain scattered between Peru and New York; the collection included objects and papers from the journey, such as a preserved taparaco moth, Aurelio Tang Ramírez’s family tree, bamboo stalks and ginger roots from Chanchamayo, abandoned railroad screw spikes from Ticlio, and a found jewelry box with a chinita wood carving. How should I archive a reservoir of other people’s memories, condensed into twenty-eight hours of MiniDV tape, and at what point do they become my memories? And what if my memory falters? On whose shoulders does the responsibility to archive fall?

Toward the tail end of my time in Peru, the aunt who inspired my initial journey to Argentina passed away on the same day that I was hit by a car. Following this episode, bees came to visit me for seven consecutive days, each landing on my navel as though to open a portal to my invisible umbilical cord. Last October my maternal grandma passed. This time a grasshopper visited us for eighty days and, peculiarly, it shared her love of sponge cake and pan-fried fish. It also refused to eat yam leaves, just like her. Another tree has fallen, and there are so many questions left unasked.

8. A Transpacific Affair: Asian/Americas and Asia and the Americas

During my travels, I heard whispers of pre-Colombian contact between Asia and the Americas. There is a book penned by Francisco Loayza in 1948 titled Chinos Llegaron antes que Colon (The Chinese Arrived before Columbus). There are undeniable parallels between the costumes used in Chinese opera and those of the Andean Diablada Festival. Peruvian researcher Fernando Trazegnies suggests that Moche ceramics depict visitors from Asia. The origin myth of Lambayeque, a region on the northern coast of Peru, tells of an almond-eyed Lord Naylamp, who arrived from the ocean and brought civilization. Some speculate that he was of Mayan or even Southeast Asian origins. And there is still that inexplicable geoglyph, Candelabra de los Andes, which, inscribed on Pisco Bay of Peru, some argue is an ancient Chinese character.

Of all the speculations of a prehistoric affair between Asia and the Americas, perhaps the most concrete one is that of Austronesia—a five-millennia transpacific human migration story that began in Taiwan and expanded west to Madagascar, east to Rapa Nui, north to the Hawaiian Islands, and south to New Zealand. Genetic research reveals that the sweet potato of Polynesia can be traced back to the Andes, proving that Polynesian contact with the Americas preceded European contact by four centuries. What other exchanges may have taken place circa 1100 CE? These highly mobile pioneers of the Pacific echo contemporary migratory movements across and between hemispheres, connecting continents to continents, islands to islands, and cultures to cultures. Their history powerfully evokes reimaginings of human interconnectivity and diasporic circulations across vast geographical distances. While diluting divisive notions of nationalism and cultural borders, they suggest that we may all have a distant cousin in Madagascar or Papua New Guinea, or perhaps a Chinese coolie relative.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the US Fulbright Scholar Program of the International Institute of Education for sponsoring this research, and express gratitude to the members of Colectivo Zoom (Helder Solari Pita, Gabriel Salazar Borja, Joel Lozano, Paola Villavicencio Nuñez, Jessica Coronel Villareal, and the late Fernando Castro Villarreal) and Juan Mejia Pisfil for their camaderie. I am also grateful to Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, Lok C. D. Siu, Liliana Kom, Vasco Pimentel, Leslie Josephs, and la colonia china of each town visited, and so many more supportive individuals who shared their stories, teachings, and insights with me.

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The Poema Colectivo 2014 project invited a group of artists from Mexico to create a new “collective poem” for today based on the 1981 project Poema Colectivo Revolución. Each invited artist was asked to nominate another friend to join the project.

With many thanks to the artists: Jonathan Hernández & Philippe Hernandez, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Gabriel Escalante, Vincente Razo, César Cortés Vega, Juan Caloca, Demián Flores, Silvia Gruner, Richard Moszka, Guillermo Rosas Sánchez, Maris Bustamante, Magali Lara, Laureana Toledo, Txema Novelo, Javier Dario Canul Melchor, Jazael Olguín Zapata, Jorge Méndez Blake, David Miranda, María Sosa, Noé Martínez, Luis Urías, Ramiro Chaves, Yollotl Alvarado, Camel Collective, Mauricio Marcin, Monica Mayer & Victor Lerma, Fernando Caridi and Beyond the Mexique Bay Orchestra.

Additional thanks to Mauricio Marcin, Maru Calva, Regina Tattersfield, and Julio García Murillo.

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Of the six group shows they staged between 1991 and 1997, one was held at a local bar, another in a private home, and still another in the basement of an office building. Big Tail Elephant’s predilection for challenging the official state-run art system by mounting exhibitions in alternative spaces earned them the sobriquet “urban guerrillas,” a title bestowed on them by curator Hou Hanru. Their retrospective at the Kunsthalle Bern in 1998 was the group’s first exhibition in a Western art institution and also, quite unexpectedly, their last show as a collective.

Today the three surviving members continue their individual art practices: Lin Yilin is a renowned performance artist; Chen Shaoxiong works with photography, video, and ink animation; and Xu Tan is recognized for his socially engaged projects. Their portfolios constitute an important case study in the development of an artists’ collective and give valuable insights into the little-known history of time-based art in South China.

This meeting of the Big Tail Elephant Group took place in 1993, after Lin Yilin had returned from six months in Germany, France, and the Netherlands. The discussion reflects the artists’ sensitivity to the rapid changes in the city as well as their anxiety about their position in the global art world. Looking back at themselves twenty years later, the Big Tail Elephants admitted that they were young, passionate, and a bit naïve about social and political conditions in general. But as is observable in their work today, their interest in being connected to and involved in society through art never changed, and that is how the Big Tail Elephant Group was tied together.

Introduction by Yu-Chieh Li

This discussion was moderated and recorded by Lin Yilin in 1993. The Chinese transcript can be read here. The English translation is by Lina Dann; the footnotes have been provided by Lina Dann, Yu-Chieh Li, and Sarah McFadden.

Big Tail Elephant Group was founded at the end of 1990. It held two large-scale exhibitions in Guangzhou—one in January 1991, and the other in October 1992. In July 1993, Big Tail Elephants held a conference that was limited to the four members of the group, and so I took on the job of moderating the discussion. Our main topics included the characteristics and directions of Big Tail Elephant Group, the group’s cultural background, and the artistic concepts and works of its members.

Lin Yilin: Xu Tan, your artistic style is already fairly mature, and your works are hardly unfamiliar to your peers in China. An artist such as yourself could simply go on following his original path. What convinced you to join Big Tail Elephant Group?

Xu Tan: Although I’m new to the group, I have collaborated with its members for quite some time. I think Big Tail Elephants has a unique trait, one that I believe is found valuable everywhere in the world. In this group, every artist’s individual creation is encouraged and supported, and you can feel the liveliness of creativity; it is a place of freedom, such that our collaboration generates a force—a lasting potential. The openness of our working structure is the source of our confidence in the future.

Liang Juhui: Besides what you just mentioned, is there anything else about Big Tail Elephants that appeals to you?

Xu Tan: This group has a mystic sense of cohesion, something that speaks to all of us. Many people have asked what in essence glues us together, and while none of us has come up with a definitive answer, we are all well aware and assured of its existence. The question is open for discussion. People talk about the South [of China], about the mystical currents that infiltrate everyday life, and I believe that it does possess a charisma and an inexplicable . . .

Liang Juhui: It’s been seven years since Lin Yilin, Chen Shaoxiong, and I started working together at the Southern Artists Salon,¹ and just as you said, there is a mystic force that brings us all together.

Chen Shaoxiong: What brings us together is what sets us apart from other artists’ groups. For instance, there isn’t a core leader in Big Tail Elephants; if any member were to leave the group, Big Tail Elephants would still hold up. It’s kind of funny—it pulls us toward union but doesn’t have a core.

Lin Yilin: The core is the name “Big Tail Elephants.”

Xu Tan: This reminds me of Jacques Derrida’s idea of a core. He said that a core can’t be found within a structure, and it can’t be found outside a structure, either. Take an orchestra, for example: who is the core? Some think the conductor is the core; others believe the first violin is the core; nonetheless, no one really is the core—only music serves as the core. From Derrida’s descriptions, I got his sense of what a core is, and I think that is exactly the kind of core-structure relationship that we have.

Liang Juhui: In simpler words, it’s like magnets in a magnetic field; complete opposites or complete compatibility cannot make a union.

Lin Yilin: Perhaps we can put it another way. “Big Tail Elephants” is a concept wrapped in a term, just like ancient Western philosophers used the term “gods” to explain natural phenomena. It demonstrates a leading concept instead of a particular person.

Chen Shaoxiong: Or instead of a concept leading us, it might be something that goes beyond individuals, a transcendental force that operates behind all this. This transcendental force leads artists to infinite possibilities in terms of thinking and creating art. This is where the energy and spirituality of Big Tail Elephants lie.

Lin Yilin: We’re open to the possibility that a shared ideological ground will eventually form within the Big Tail Elephant Group. Maybe as we spend more and more time collaborating with each other, we’ll naturally share more in common, and eventually it might result in a strong credo for our group. Nevertheless, we’re not actively pursuing that, and we won’t take any credo as a self-restraining standard.

Chen Shaoxiong: Speaking for myself, no particular concept precedes my artwork. It’s not like we have a concrete theory of “Big Tail Elephants.” As we go through the process of creation, we adjust our concepts. You could say that the birth of the artwork and the birth of the concept are simultaneous. And I think I speak for all of us.

Xu Tan: Surely each of us is taking our own artistic path, but undeniably, we’re heading in the same direction, which is hard to describe. If you look back at history, artistic creativity is always connected to strong individuals. I hope our group is a rare but peculiar union where several powerful individuals make up a powerful group. Here, each and every one of us can succeed as an influential artist, all the while working together.

Lin Yilin: There’s a trendy topic in the Chinese art world nowadays: the relationship between contemporary Chinese art and international art. This so-called international art follows the paradigm and criteria of contemporary European and American art. This is where the debate comes in. What makes a piece of contemporary Chinese art valuable? Is a work of art that reflects China’s current cultural background worth more? Or is more meaning to be found in a piece that conforms to the ideas of international art? This discrepancy actually paves the way for contemporary Chinese art that is more multifaceted. In fact, it is multifaceted essentially in a different way from international art. When critics consider an artists’ group like Big Tail Elephants, they might tend to see it as a collective guided by international artistic paradigms. Does this mean that the works of Big Tail Elephant Group are free from considerations of or references to the cultural background of contemporary Chinese art?

Xu Tan: This is a very interesting question. I think what makes observing international culture and Chinese culture so much fun and so delightful is the fact that we observe both of them from a certain distance. In Guangdong, things are quite distinct; unlike northerners, who are deeply rooted in the more established territory of Chinese culture, we are always observing traditional culture from a distance.² As for Western culture, we certainly stand at a great distance from that as well. In the end, we can’t belong to either. There is no culture here—it’s a cultural desert. However, I feel most elated when walking in this desert.

Lin Yilin: The only trouble is the lack of water in the desert. But this is why our work is so significant—we maintain the excitement where there is no water! Now, whether this excitement can last is something that will depend on us.

Chen Shaoxiong: In that case, Big Tail Elephants must turn into a great camel! And it truly has. From where we stand, it is true that traditional culture has little influence over us, political issues involve us only remotely, and Western paradigms are far removed. It is precisely from this position of remote detachment that uniqueness arises. On the other hand, international standards do insidiously restrict or influence China’s art. When the West comes across certain distinguishing features of contemporary Chinese art, it integrates these works into the international canon on the grounds that they are either part of the broad spectrum of human culture or have special value as regional art. But if we were to discuss this, there is simply too much to consider, and the subject is hard to elaborate for now.

Lin Yilin: Ever since the May Fourth Movement,³ Chinese art has been heavily diluted and weakened by the influence of foreign culture; generally speaking, pre-nineteenth-century Western art has probably been accepted best. If you ignore the content and focus only on structure, official art in China is basically a variation of nineteenth-century Western art paradigms. Over time, the West has evolved from an agricultural society into an industrial one, and from there into an age of information technology. Contemporary Western art is certainly a product of these societal changes. Europe and the U.S. are currently economically strong and culturally dominant, but as China catches up with these developed countries, it might be able to compete with them in terms of investment in culture. By that time, the division between the international and Chinese paradigms might disappear, or at least become less ambiguous or confusing.

Xu Tan: When it comes to international or Chinese paradigms, I don’t think China really has a paradigm yet. If we try to make sense of the criteria used in national exhibition awards, we find they aren’t significant enough to be called the paradigm of an individual culture. Whatever criteria we have now are all just imported.

Lin Yilin: In order to establish a real Chinese art paradigm, we must consider two factors: first, artistic quality, and second, awareness of the field of contemporary culture. Surely we are speaking not only of regional cultural awareness, but also of its comparison and relation to others.

Chen Shaoxiong: When Western scholars are evaluating contemporary Chinese art, they look into more than just the culture and quality of the art; they consider social issues, too. They view China’s inferiority in social and economic development and base their evaluations on these standards. This is why they see Chinese art as only ornamental instead of viewing it on a competitive level.

Lin Yilin: When artists consider art, they should disregard geographic distinction and focus more on the art itself, because everyone is, in one way or another, trapped in and confined to the society in which they live. For example, considering current productivity in China, artists don’t have the privilege of utilizing art forms involving higher technologies, such as computers. The medium you use might be intimately tied to the surrounding social conditions, and this is one way that art can reveal those conditions. The problem with contemporary Chinese art is that both the artists and the critics are more concerned with expressing worries about society and venting their own emotions bluntly in the images. This is permissible, but it shouldn’t be the sole focus. Another group of artists, those who focus on essential artistic issues, is often neglected. It’s not that these artists don’t reflect on society in their works, it’s that they do so in a more introverted, subtle way.

Chen Shaoxiong: Speaking of social issues, there are two problems that we must consider separately. One is the problem of the social system; the other is the problem of developing productivity within society. If the creation of an artwork relies on a certain technology, we would certainly fall behind; on the other hand, from the standpoint of the social system, China possesses some unique characteristics that might interest Westerners. Here in Guangzhou, the advanced state of economic development brings us closer to the developed countries, and political influences rarely truly affect us; therefore, artistically speaking, we are free from social restraints and problems when trying to present a so-called indigenous art.

Xu Tan: For now, when we concern ourselves with the international paradigm and the Chinese paradigm, while we sound as if we are promoting Eastern culture, we are also just trying to explain the opposite influence: that of traditional Chinese culture on contemporary Western culture. For various reasons, Westerners welcome this influence, but truthfully speaking, they probably don’t understand where the merits of Eastern culture’s traditions lie. They come to China, select artworks, and exhibit them back in the West; all this amounts to a superficial exploration of Eastern culture. Unfortunately, what they’ve explored are political and social issues. Of course, this can serve as a start, and it’s all right, because the rest takes time! It takes patient dedication. As for international criteria, they do exist; many artistic issues are issues to be studied as a discipline—visual arts and vision, the relationship between art and society, the extent of society’s impact on art—all these issues have been explored by many people. It would be impossible for us to sum up all this laborious work in a term as simple as “Chinese criteria.” Let me provide a concrete example. Lin Yilin had an artwork back in the Netherlands, one with fruits hanging on the wall. I believe this is a fairly straightforward idea, but it is indeed one that doesn’t come easily to an artist. Visual, biological, and psychological effects are all in play, and anyone who saw the piece felt an intense imbalance, one that is hard to capture in words. It is a matter of vision and discipline, not just implicit commentary on society, political issues, or Eastern culture. We were raised in this society, on Chinese soil; we developed into ordinary human beings, and especially those of us who have our abilities, cannot be indifferent to this life and this society. Our lives are inevitably fueled with passion nourished by this land and its resources. But in our day and age, if artists wish to have long artistic lives and make a cultural contribution through their work, they must concern themselves with international criteria and cannot stand to one side. Because of where we stand, and because the resources we employ are so regional, I hope that our ideas are in sync with the most advanced ideas of the day.

Lin Yilin: Chinese art is marked by the exigencies of the social environment in which it is created. Such limitations are not necessarily harmful. For example, the materials each of you sitting here uses reflect this society’s material foundation and economic development. And now, I wish to move our discussion to the artists and their works. Let’s talk about Xu Tan first. Initially, Xu Tan worked with a traditional art form—easel painting. He then moved to combining easel painting with the readymade, and now he’s working on multimedia installations. In 1992, he used fluorescent plastic tubes, a common material found in almost every karaoke nightclub⁴ in Guangzhou, and glassmaking techniques used in the local production of handicrafts and sculpture. This illustrates how a glimpse of Guangzhou society is captured in Xu Tan’s works, although that has never been his artistic intention.

Liang Juhui: Xu Tan’s works also relate to the food culture of southern China, for example, its local restaurants and dapaidong.⁵

Lin Yilin: The organizer of the Berlin exhibition China Avant-Garde was especially interested in Xu Tan’s new works.⁶ He had never before seen an artist use fluorescent plastic tubes in an artwork. I think Western society disdains this kind of entertainment culture, and so it’s no wonder that no Western artist has ever tried to use such material. This also reflects how great the discrepancy can be when it comes to the materials that each region provides for its artists. In Xu Tan’s works, you can see how he cares for popular culture. In this regard, you might compare him to Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, and Kenny Scharf, although regional, economic, and racial differences lead them to focus on different sorts of objects. The significance of Xu Tan’s works might seem even more complex than theirs, given that his works reference a wide variety of cultural factors.

Xu Tan: Chen Shaoxiong and I were discussing an issue—artworks can have provocative intentions. From Marcel Duchamp to Joseph Beuys, our lives, all the things in our world, everything can be turned into art; there is nothing that cannot become art. But here comes the problem: if everything can become art, then art loses its meaning. I think Jeff Koons is truly amazing; he was able to find something in our society that wasn’t yet art. I heard that 50 percent of Americans don’t consider his work to be art, while no one dares to deny that Duchamp’s works are. My hope is that if one day I can find something that isn’t art, I’ll rush to do it. Unfortunately, I just can’t find it. I created an artwork that refers to restaurants, and while people think a urinal is art, they don’t seem to think that restaurants [count as art]. . . .⁷ Take those shiny colorful lights in restaurants as an example. Many of us are willing to accept filthy trash as art, but somehow when we look at clean, beautiful things, we see ornament and not art. I have spent my life upsetting my artistic peers, and I find it very exciting.

Lin Yilin: Your goal might be to upset your contemporaries, but perhaps future artists will be thrilled by your work.

Xu Tan: The problem is, once I do it [a work that seems to be non-art], people turn happy.

Chen Shaoxiong: But you have to know, people are happy about your work not because it is art, and this is a very intriguing kind of happiness; their happiness might actually come about because they don’t think it’s art.

Lin Yilin: I find a paradox in Xu Tan’s works. On the one hand, we see your engagement with Chinese popular culture, and on the other, even deeper, your contemplation of mankind’s survival issues, such as wars. On your canvases, we see references to the war in the Middle East, Yugoslavia’s civil war, and variations on classical war paintings.You have two lines of thought in a single work.⁸ Do you think such dissonance gives your mind a kind of consonance?

Xu Tan: Our era has produced this condition—we are used to accepting dissonance. Human brains possess the ability to smooth things over. In the past, once an idea entered the system, whether it was harmonious or not, it was processed until it reached a state of harmony, and then it was accepted and we felt more comfortable with it. However, I’ve noticed that this is no longer so. Things have changed: we have become unable to process dissonance in this way. This is something our era has forced on us. Our living condition gives us such a sense, and I feel like what I did in that work is truthful. Recycling and reconfiguring used materials [found objects] creates a peculiar and especially thrilling feeling. The bamboo in Liang Juhui’s work is coated with a layer of light-green paint and is assembled in association with lamps. A visual-psychological analysis of the materials suggests that the bamboo is hard to swallow, and the work seems so vulgar! Such mediocrity, such handicraft. . . . At the time he first showed the works I was envious of him, because many who didn’t appreciate them claimed they weren’t art but handicraft, and I thought to myself, “Great, how I wish someone spoke of me in this way!” What I find best about it is precisely the fact that it doesn’t seem to be art, that it seems more like craft. By the way, it is that thought again: urinals can be art, while handicrafts cannot? Liang Juhui’s artworks illustrate this problem perfectly. You see people collecting rotten bicycles from vacant lots and then calling it art, but such art has no appeal because ever since Duchamp, we’ve all known that this can be art. Now handicrafts becoming art— that is something that proves Liang Juhui’s brilliance. His works are very characteristic of Eastern culture. A material such as bamboo is especially devoid of the sense of being an art material. Just like Lin Yilin’s comments [above] about how Westerners are particularly sensitive to material, I think bamboo is an exception to such sentiments because it is so hollow! It is very different from the materials favored by Westerners, such as steel or concrete; bamboo is especially Eastern, and it gives off such a feeling and generates particular cultural associations. Therefore, this work has it all covered. In the 1970s, people emphasized the purity of form and the aesthetics; if you take away the cultural connotations, bamboo serves this exact function.

Liang Juhui: In my first artwork, the mirror and the “cabinet,”⁹there was what appeared to be a cabinet; I painted it neatly, placed small mirrors in its tiny square holes, and combined it with a big mirror to create a very ordinary space. It was the labor of a handyman. In my second piece, I used bamboo, lamps, and wisteria to create a large handcrafted work, that’s all.

Lin Yilin: If you look from Liang Juhui’s first piece, with mirrors, to his second piece, with bamboo, you might think there’s great gap between his works. It would almost seem as if he is fickle or leaps from one idea to the next, and it makes you wonder: is he trying to affirm the original subject, or deny it? From what he has just told us, we can see how rare an artist he is. We don’t find any specific message in his work; all we see is passion to complete something. In the process, he remains true to his understanding of the world and what he wants to do—an interest in handicraft itself. This makes the artwork especially genuine and free of unstable factors introduced by superficial changes.

Chen Shaoxiong: The gap between Liang Juhui’s two works lies in the lack of consistency or continuity in the materials used; instead, there is a coherence in how he explores new material, and this itself is the consistency.

Lin Yilin: The way he turns materials vulgar might be something he is unaware of, and yet this lack of awareness is invaluable. If not for this lack, he might have just repeated what contemporary Western artists have been doing, such as Jeff Koons’s interest in vulgarity as well as photographs by Pierre et Gilles, which all express sensitivity to the world. Liang Juhui’s works, on the other hand, are not products of his awareness of vulgarity.

Liang Juhui: I like to transform ordinary material into a crafted work, a work of completion, not in the sense of pure artistic beauty, but of crafted perfection.

Xu Tan: The insight Lin Yilin just offered makes complete sense. In Liang Juhui’s bamboo work, I see corruption. This corruption is different from that of Jeff Koons. Koons acts as if he set out to be corrupt, making him somewhat affected or as if he is trying too hard, whereas Liang Juhui brings corruption into his art with a pure and innocent heart, as if he is genuinely elated and excited about following that path. In this sense, I feel like it’s almost an innocent corruption—perhaps you won’t like my choice of words!

Liang Juhui: Nonsense! I like it! I like it very much! Art is like when a person buys paint for a cabinet in his home, and he brushes and paints until it is smooth—I like this job!

Chen Shaoxiong: From the bottom of your heart.

Liang Juhui: It’s like when your shoes are dirty, you must wax and polish them until they shine.

Chen Shaoxiong: How corrupt! Polish them until they shine in a corrupt way, ha!

Lin Yilin: In my opinion, Liang Juhui’s works are the opposite of Jeff Koons’s and Kenny Scharf’s; he stands closer to the ideas of Joseph Beuys.

Xu Tan: Exactly! Except that Liang Juhui won’t express it by washing the feet of others, but he will polish his shoes until they shine.

Liang Juhui: Shoe polishing is an art itself.

Lin Yilin: This is how an artists speaks.

Xu Tan: True! And this kind of language threatens most Chinese artists. Many artists are frightened by the sight of Liang Juhui running around doing a craftsman’s work, and with a spring in his step at that! He runs around collecting payments, too, and I’m not sure that he’s not some kind of loan shark. Anyway, artistically speaking, this is a total massacre, and Liang Juhui, the killer behind it all, is a great artist to me.

Chen Shaoxiong: Ha!

Xu Tan: The differences among members of Big Tail Elephant Group can be huge. Chen Shaoxiong is very different from Liang Juhui. Chen Shaoxiong is a scholarly artist, very thorough and serious. His works express time with a particular sense of conscientiousness and logic. Time is still an enigma to humans; time and life, time and the essence of the universe, these are things we cannot elaborate. What do you think? Please share your thoughts.

Chen Shaoxiong: When I express time in my works, I’m not looking to discuss serious philosophical questions; I wish to treat it in a simple, concrete way. I treat it as if it had nothing to do with life or the universe, unlike the way that most scholars view it. Moreover, my interpretation of time serves a more intriguing role in its relationship to the whole piece of work. That is to say that this “time” is irrelevant to our being and daily lives; it is like time that exists in a vacuum and bears no relationship to air. Our usual conception of time is that it is continuous and has no beginning and no end, but in my work, time does have a beginning and an end; time is confined to spans of several hours or several days, and these are fragments extracted from my personal life.

Xu Tan: In Chen Shaoxiong’s works, I sense discordance between the perception of time and the characteristics of the colored fluorescent lamps. Would this be taken as not so ideal? Personally, this is my favorite part. Why? Because I always feel as if we live in discord; perhaps you didn’t have this concept in mind when you were creating the work, but I believe these things enter your subconscious. This discordance is a regular part of our lives, and so after you realize it in art, it disturbs the psyches and the senses of others. After seeing the lamps, viewers have to look at the time on the boards. Colored fluorescent lamps gives off a hint of luxury, and when you add that to a certain element of time, together they generate a sense of destruction or transience, even a hint of crisis.

Chen Shaoxiong: Time as Roman Opalka depicts it is objective, but I refuse this objectivity of time in my work and choose to enter a different “time.” Say a person goes into a coma for a week. If he went into a coma on the tenth and woke up on the seventeenth, then subjectively he should think he woke up on the eleventh and not the seventeenth. The blank or void in his conscious experience is irrelevant to objective time. In my work I have created an environment and system for escaping from mundane, structured time, so that when you’re inside, you recognize the gap between your life and your objective life. Which one is more truthful, I cannot say.

Xu Tan: Are you suggesting that this “time” of yours is stripped of eternity?

Chen Shaoxiong: Inside a given, limited, concrete time frame there might actually be another kind of eternity. This kind of eternity is like something that has frozen in the refrigerator.

Lin Yilin: People can observe the changes in their own biological system and in the natural world and feel the presence of time. But I’m thinking that animals cannot possibly be aware of the passage of time. How long have you existed in this world? This is a question reserved for humans, which differentiates humans and animals. Out of practical necessity, humans established the concept of time and invented means to calculate it. It was only then that humans became aware of limited, structured time.

Xu Tan: Animals have no awareness of time even though humans do, and so time does not necessarily exist; instead, it is only the awareness or perception of a certain thing. The upshot of such an understanding of time is splendid, for if you wish to freeze it or even cut yourself off from it, it is your cognitive right to do so, and also your sensory right.

Lin Yilin: Your works’ lives coincide with the duration of the exhibitions in which they are seen. Their titles are “7 Days” and “72 and a Half Hours.” After these periods of time elapsed. . . .

Chen Shaoxiong: Then the artwork becomes a corpse.

Liang Juhui: Chen Shaoxiong has compressed time in his work and clarified his thoughts and concepts on time.

Xu Tan: Everyone endows the time they spend working on the creation of an artwork with great meaning. Any minute or second I spend on a piece is a piece of positive life, because it entails agglomeration. However, for Chen Shaoxiong, it is just the opposite: it is negative life, a meaningless period of time, a time with no time, an exhaustion and halting of time. For others, time spent creating art is time meant to capture the world’s attention and create meaning, but for Chen Shaoxiong, this sense of time and this meaning are precisely what he wants to annihilate. When he worked on this piece, he was in a state of “non-life” and recognized a “non-time,” which led him to observe time and life from newly discovered angles.

Liang Juhui: Now let’s hear Lin Yilin talk about his new works in Europe.

Lin Yilin: In the few short months I was in Europe, I realized that my perspective on art had been freed from my previous passion for form, such as the form of architecture or the form of sculpture. I don’t mean to say that I am indifferent to form; I only mean to say that I now treat it as a structural part of the artwork, and I have come to focus more on the thing itself and its essence. This is a shift within me. Ever since showing my work Wall Itself (1993) in Rotterdam, I have expressed these changes accordingly.

Xu Tan: I talked about this piece of yours earlier. The title of your work is Wall Itself, but I get a different meaning from it; I feel like there’s a subtext: art and art itself. They are interchangeable and the title makes the perfect allusion. From what I remember, you have produced a lot of work expressing this recurring idea about art itself. You have made it clear that what’s more important than art is art itself.

Chen Shaoxiong: How would you feel if the title of your work were to be Wall’s Material Itself? A wall is made up of bricks, and bricks are a material, and so Wall Itself and Wall’s Material Itself, what do you think?

Lin Yilin: When I was working on Ideal Housing Standard Series in 1991, I was already very intrigued by materials. The resonance between materials is something that interested me. A material collides with another material to form a new object, meanwhile the resonance that takes place can have a great impact on the audience’s visual perception. A wall is the form that bricks come together to create, and the meaning of bricks lies in their making of the wall. Wall bears another implication, which is to elevate things, even if it is not the main purpose. So when we speak of walls, we are also talking about bricks. I am even more intrigued by the bricks, but since the bricks are constructed into a wall, the title I choose will be of no importance. For instance, if you consider the building blocks of human beings, they include cells, water, organic materials, and so on. But when we talk about a specific person, we can all look beyond those shared structural elements and focus on the specific individual. As for me, I am most interested in what it is inside a human being that constitutes the meaning of that person.

Chen Shaoxiong: You mean the elements.

Lin Yilin: When we try to capture it in art, we cannot do a philosopher’s work and present the matter of essence directly to the audience. If you really do arrange the bare essence on a plate and serve it raw to the audience, then art leaves no room for the audience to fill in. Such a thing wouldn’t be art, it would probably be science, or even philosophy.

Chen Shaoxiong: Other artists take a material and turn it into something else. You, however, take a material and turn it into nothing different; your material is still starkly exposed and not infused with any cultural meaning or life experience or even personal story.

Lin Yilin: It’s true that the walls in my works don’t seem any different than ordinary walls. It’s only because I bestowed my walls with a certain ideal and faith that they stand apart from all other walls. I wasn’t looking to create a strange wall; I was trying to use this peculiarity to illustrate how people can be unaware of truths and facts about walls.

Xu Tan: At first sight, the wall and its water-filled plastic bags are off-putting— we can’t accept such a situation. Water bags are risky. They leak, and they create a sense of insecurity and tension. They create a disturbing effect that appears to defy visual criteria. Such opposition results not from the use of complementary colors but instead from from proposing the contemplation of artistic language itself, or at least the shock of it.

Lin Yilin: Artists often have unusual, extraordinary ideas and realize them in concrete form, creating stunning effects. In the process, some factors, aside from the ideas themselves, are related to chance, such as capturing a thing in its exact moment or developing a sensitivity to materials and assembling them in a way that reinforces your original ideas. All these are technical issues and very personal in terms of technical language. Whether or not a work of art is able to surprise also depends on a viewer’s life experience. For instance, an average person has an average familiarity with walls; therefore, when they realize how my work goes against their knowledge and experience, they will be taken aback. However, if there is a person who has never been in contact with a wall, then he or she might react nonchalantly to my wall work.

Chen Shaoxiong: So it’s actually about psychological expectations.

Lin Yilin: Well, my real goal isn’t to induce astonishment. It’s just that if a work of art lacks a certain support of livelihood, then its vitality should be questioned. I focus on the meaning that content gives to materials. My choice of form might surprise people, but perhaps after digging more deeply into the artwork, they might actually be taken aback by its ordinariness.

The post Big Tail Elephants: Liang Juhui, Xu Tan, Chen Shaoxiong, and Me appeared first on post.

This is a transcript of a meeting of the Big Tail Elephant Group that took place in 1993. Read the English translation here.

林一林整理

“大尾象工作组”成立于1990年底。1991年1月和1992年10月，曾经在广州举办了两次大型展览。1993年7月， “大尾象”举行了这次讨论会，参加讨论会的人仅限于这个工作组的成员，因而我充当半个发问人开始了这次的讨论会，讨论的方向主要是“大尾象工作组”的活动特点，它所处的文化背景及其成员的艺术观念和作品情况。

林一林：徐坦， 你的艺术风格已经很成熟了，并且你的作品在中国同行的眼里也不太陌生，作为你这样的艺术家完全可以按自己原有的思路继续走下去，什么原因令你加入“大尾象工作组”呢？

徐坦： 作为新近加入“大尾象工作组”的新成员，我和“大尾象”的成员在艺术上的合作已经有一段不短的时间了。我觉得“大尾象”有一个很大的特点， 我相信这种特点在世界上任何一个地方都具有特殊的价值。在这个工作组里，每位艺术家的个人创造都会得到鼓励和支持，你会感到创造性思维的活跃，这里总是处于一种自由的状态，大家在一起工作预示着一种力量，是一中深远的潜在力。我们抱有对未来的信心在于我们工作的结构方式具有开放性。

梁钜辉： 除了你刚才所说的，“大尾象”对你最有吸引力的，是否还有别的什么？

徐坦： 这个工作组有一种神秘的凝聚力，有一种共同的东西。很多人问过“大尾象”的共同点是什么，我发现大家都说不出来，但我们都意识到确实是有共同之处， 这种共同点有待别人或我们去发现。 别人谈到南方的形而上缺少和生活中的神秘因素，我想在这点上具有魅力和不可说的… …。

梁钜辉: 在“南方艺术家沙龙”的时候，我和林一林、陈劭雄开始合作，到现在已经有7年了。就象你所说的，这种神秘力量把我们结合在一起。

陈劭雄：我们的共同点是区别于其他的艺术群体的做法， 如“大尾象”没有什么核心人物， 假如工作组里少了任何一个人， “大尾象”仍然还存在，很奇怪，它具有凝聚力， 但又没有核心。

林一林： 这个核心就是“大尾象”这个词。

徐坦： 我想起德里达关于中心的一个问题，他谈到中心既不存在某个结构之内，也不存在于某个结构之外， 就好像一个乐团， 谁是中心？ 有人认为指挥是中心， 有人认为第一提琴手是中心， 但他发现那都不是中心， 音乐才是他们的中心。从他的描述里，我们有了对这种结构的感受，我就觉得我们的共同和中心就象这样一种结构关系。

梁钜辉： 用一种简单的说法，就象磁铁和磁场，如果是绝对的相同或者绝对的相异，都不可能构成一个统一体。

林一林：是不是还可以这样说：“大尾象”这个词就象西方古代哲学家对自然的最终解释是上帝这个词。这是一种理念起作用，而不是某一个具体的人。

陈劭雄: 也不是某种思想在引导，是一种超乎于个人之上的抽象物引导着我们，或者是一种术在操作着。这就给每个艺术家从事艺术创作和思考提供了无限的可能性，这就是“大尾象”的活力所在和精神面貌。

林一林： 以后， “大尾象”是否会形成一种共同的主张，我们也不去限定它。也许在一起合作时间长了，某种共通的地方是很难避免， 很有可能慢慢会形成这个群体强有力的倾向，但我们不会刻意追求，不会把某种信条作为我们的标准约束自己。

陈劭雄：以我个人做作品的体会， 不是观念先行，不是提出“大尾象”的明确的理论，而是通过作品的创造来调整自己的观念。可以说观念的形成和作品的产生是同步的，我觉得大家的情况都差不多。

徐坦：每个人在工作上的距离是存在的，但也有一个说不清楚的共同方向。历史上，所有艺术上的创造的价值都在于强有力的个人。希望我们的组织是很特殊很少见的结合，是由几个强有力的个人组合成一个强有力的集团。在我们这里，每个人单独都可以成为很重要的艺术家，我们又在一起工作。

林一林： 现在中国艺术界一个时髦的话题，就是中国当代艺术和国际艺术（所谓的国际艺术是以欧美当代艺术为标准）之间的关系。 这里很容易产生争论，中国当代艺术是以中国当下文化为背景所产生的东西具有价值？还是与国际艺术的方向平行着思考更有意义？就因为产生如此的分歧，中国当代艺术呈现出多元的面貌，这跟国际艺术的多元在本质上还不是一回事。作为“大尾象”这样的艺术群体，很有可能，批评家会把它归到以国际标准为参照来考虑艺术的艺术集群。那么，是否“大尾象”的艺术家所考虑的问题就脱离了中国当代艺术的文化背景呢？

徐坦： 这个问题很有意思，我觉得最有趣和最愉快的是我们看国际文化和中国文化都是站在一定距离之外去看的。 在广东的状况是比较特殊，不像北方人，他们是深深地生活在中国文化传统的故土之内，而我们是在一定距离看这种传统，对西方文化我们同样有着很大的距离，这造成我们那边都挨不上， 这里没有文化，是文化的沙漠， 我感觉在沙漠里行走是最令人愉快的。

林一林： 唯一不愉快的是沙漠里没有水。 我们的意义就是在没有水的情况下还那么愉快，这种愉快能不能持久，这就要看我们的。

陈劭雄： 那么， “大尾象”就要变成大尾骆驼。的确是这样，在这里我们没有感受到本土文化对我们有太大的影响， 对政治问题没有切身体验，而跟西方标准也有比较远的距离。就因为不能跟那边挨上，才有可能产生独特的东西。 另外一点， 国际标准其实无形中还是在制约或者影响所谓的中国标准的艺术。当西方发现中国当代艺术所具有的特色， 他们会把中国当代艺术包融到国际标准里，觉得这也是整个人类文化，或者是艺术在不同地域里具有特别的价值。 谈到这方面会有很多东西纠缠不清， 没办法说得很明确。

林一林: 从“五四”以来，中国艺术所受外来文化的冲击， 普遍能接受的主要还是西方十九世纪以前的艺术。 剥离内容的外壳，官方艺术基本上还是西方十九世纪的艺术标准的变种。 随着社会的发展， 西方从农业社会发展到工业社会， 直到现在的信息时代， 西方当代艺术是因为社会经历了这种变化而产生。 欧美在经济各方面的强大， 文化现在占了主导地位， 随着中国的经济状况的改善，越来越靠近先进发达国家，资金在文化上的投入与文化强国趋于平衡， 国际标准和中国标准的划分也许慢慢会消解，最起码不会产生困惑。

徐坦： 我是这样想的， 所谓的国际标准和中国标准，我觉得中国还没有标准，如果拿国内展览会上评奖标准作为评判标准， 这还不能形成具有独立文化意义的标准， 现在我们的标准都是引进的。

林一林： 要树立真正的中国艺术标准， 必须包括两个方面， 一个是艺术质量的标准， 一个是当代文化意识的标准，当然这种当代文化意识不仅仅是地域性，而要横向比较。

陈劭雄：西方学者在看中国当代艺术的时候，考虑更多的不是文化和艺术品的质量， 而是社会问题，从社会、经济发展的差异的角度， 并以此为尺度， 所以中国的艺术只能成为点缀，而没有提升到同一尺度去比较。

林一林：作为艺术家考虑艺术， 应该消除地域上的差别， 应该注重的更多是艺术本身的问题。因为你逃脱不了你所处的社会对你无形的局限， 例如，中国现有的生产力， 艺术家还没有办法考虑到电脑这种跟高科技有关的艺术形式， 你所用的媒介物很有可能是与社会紧密联系的一种物质， 这就是艺术对社会的一种暗示。中国当代艺术的问题， 是艺术家和评论家所关心的更多是在画面直接流露对社会的关心和自我情绪的渲泄， 这可以表现， 但不是唯一的。 另外一种艺术家， 就是考虑艺术问题的艺术家往往受到忽略， 并不是说这种艺术家没有反映这个社会， 而是他们的方式更内在， 不那么一目了然。

陈劭雄： 谈到社会， 有两个问题， 一定要分开谈， 一个是社会的体制， 一个是社会的生产力发展问题。 如果艺术品的制作必需借助某种科技， 我们的情况是比较落后的；从社会体制方面来看， 中国就有一些独特的东西， 这种东西可能令西方人很感兴趣。 在广州， 经济商业跟先进国家的距离靠近了些，而人们很难感受到政治对你的影响， 所以，在艺术上我们没有必要考虑有关社会体制的问题， 来呈现所谓本土的艺术。

徐坦： 现在， 关心国际标准和中国标准， 充其量想到宏扬东方文化， 也不过是大概说明中国传统文明对当今西方文明风靡世界的反影响。 西方人出于各种原因， 也希望看到这种反影响。 实际上， 西方人也搞不清楚哪是东方文化的优良传统。 他们来中国挑选艺术品拿到西方举办展览， 其实是对东方文化的探索而已。 很不幸， 他们探索到的是关于政治问题、 社会问题。 当然这是个开始， 不要紧， 需要时间啊！ 需要我们有耐心的工作。 国际标准倒真的存在， 很多艺术上的问题是一门学科的问题， 比如视觉艺术关于视觉， 艺术与社会的关系， 社会对艺术的影响到什么程度， 这是多年来在很多人的探索中发展到今天。 我们不可能用一句话： 中国标准。 来代替所有的艰苦劳动的结果。 我说一个很具体的例子， 林一林在荷兰做的作品，墙上挂着水袋， 我相信是很朴素很简单的构思， 但这个构思确实不容易想出来， 它具有视觉、 生理和心理的影响， 所有人看了以后都有极大的不平衡， 而这种不平衡是很难用语言来形容的， 这就是视觉和学科的问题， 而不是简单跟社会挂钩， 不是政治问题， 不是东方文化的问题。 我们生长在这个社会， 在中国土壤上作为一个很正常的人， 甚至对自己的反应能力还是有一定自信的人， 对我们的社会生活是不可能不关心的， 我们的生活必然提供了这种地域和材料所引起的激情。 在我们这个时代， 艺术家如果要长期工作， 希望自己的工作对文化有一定影响， 必然对这种国际标准要作出关心， 不能不闻不问的， 由于我们所在的地方， 我们所用的材料又是特别的地域性， 我希望我们的观念应该是人类发展到今日的观念。

林一林： 在做作品的过程中， 因为受到这个社会环境的物质的局限。 无形中形成了中国艺术家的作品特点， 这个局限不是一件坏事情， 例如在座几位所采用的材料， 很明显地反映了这个社会的物质基础和经济发达的程度。 现在， 我打算把话题引到艺术家和他的作品， 先谈徐坦， 徐坦的整个艺术发展过程是从架上绘画这样一种传统形式， 到架上绘画与现成物的结合， 现在采用的是多媒介的装置形式。 在92年的作品中， 他所采用萤光塑料管， 这种材料几乎在广州的歌舞厅都能看到， 还有利用玻璃钢翻制鸡的方式， 也是这一地区大量制作工艺品的雕塑行货的做法。 这就说明， 从作品的侧面就可以看到广州这个社会在徐坦的作品里的投射， 但这还不是他作品的观念。

梁钜辉： 徐坦的作品跟现在南方的饮食文化很有关系， 如个体户的餐厅和大排档， 他的作品反映了这一地域的文化。

林一林： 柏林的“中国前卫艺术展”的展览组织人， 对徐坦的新作品尤为关注， 他们认为还没有别的艺术家采用过萤光塑料管这种材料。 我想西方社会对娱乐文化那么不屑一顾， 难怪西方艺术家找不到这种材料， 这也反映了每个地区所提供给艺术家所能挖掘的媒介物有时候差别是那么大。
　　从徐坦的作品可以发现他对大众文化的关心， 跟安迪•沃霍、基思•哈宁和沙夫相比， 徐坦与他们可能是在同一个出发点上， 因为地域、 经济和人种的差别， 关心的对象自然就不会一样。 徐坦的作品含义显得更复杂，在作品里包融了多种文化因素。

徐坦： 我跟陈劭雄谈到的一个问题， 就是作品具有某种挑衅意味。 从杜桑到波依斯， 我们的生活， 我们世界所有的东西， 一切都可以成为艺术， 没有东西不能成为艺术， 这样就成问题了， 所有东西都能成为艺术， 那么， 艺术就没有意义。 我觉得杰夫•库恩斯非常的了不起， 他居然还发现社会中还有一些东西不是艺术， 据说有一半的美国人认为他的作品不是艺术， 而杜桑几乎所有人都不敢不认为他的东西不是艺术了。 我的愿望是， 如果我还能找到那一样东西不是艺术， 我一定赶快去做， 但很不幸， 就是找不到这个东西。 我把作品做得像餐馆， 别人可以认为小便器是艺术， 但是别人不大认为餐馆… …, 例如餐馆挂的彩灯， 我们很多人可以认為一件很赃的垃圾是艺术， 我们不能认为很干净， 很漂亮的东西是艺术， 而认为是装饰品。 这辈子老是能让周围搞艺术的人感到不高兴， 我总觉得是一件振奋人心的事情。

林一林： 你的目的想让现在搞艺术的人不高兴， 也许以后的人都会很高兴。

徐坦： 问题是我一做， 别人就高兴了。

陈劭雄： 但你要知道， 别人对你的作品的高兴不是因为它是艺术， 这种高兴很有意思， 很有可能是因为人们认为那不是艺术而高兴。

林一林： 从徐坦的作品看， 有一点我发现是相当矛盾的， 你所关心的中国大众文化， 同时从更深一层会看到你对人类的一些生存问题的思考，如战争， 在画面上看到的中东战争， 南斯拉夫的内战， 还有战争场面的古典画的变体画， 两种思考在同一件作品里反映出来， 这样的不和谐是否给你的心理带来另一种和谐呢？

徐坦： 我们这个时代提供给我们这样一个状态： 我们习惯于接受这种很不和谐的东西。 人的大脑有一种和谐的功能， 以前， 所有的东西不管和不和谐， 进入到框架以后进行处理， 处理成和谐， 然后接受了， 心里就比较舒服。 但是， 我发现这个时代成了这样一种状态； 处理不了， 它就是那么不和谐。 这是时代强加给我们的， 生活状态给我们这样一种感觉， 我觉得我这样做是真实的。
　　在某些已经使用过的材料里， 它的重新构造和组合会带来很奇特、特别令人兴奋和不可言说的感觉。 梁钜辉作品里的竹子涂了一层浅绿色的油漆， 组合方式里还有灯。 从材料的视觉心理上分析， 看了这些竹子让人有不能把食物吞咽下去的感觉， 它显得很庸俗啊， 这种庸俗和工艺设计……。当时我非常羡慕他， 因为很多不喜欢他作品的人都说它不是艺术， 象工艺， 我觉得这下好了， 很遗憾没有人这样说我。 我觉得它特别好就在于不象艺术， 象工艺， 话说回来， 就是那句话： 小便器可以成为艺术， 工艺品就不能成为艺术？梁钜辉的作品就说明了这个问题。你可以看到谁在垃圾场把捡到的烂自行车放在那里说是艺术，但这种艺术是没有丝毫吸引力的， 因为大家已经知道从杜桑开始这本来就是艺术。 工艺品成为艺术， 这证明梁钜辉不得了。 梁钜辉的作品很有东方文化的特点， 竹子这种材料特别缺乏材料感， 就象林一林这次回来讲的西方人对物质的感触是很深刻， 很强烈的， 我觉得竹子比较例外， 这种东西很空啊！ 和钢铁、水泥或者是西方人常喜欢用的东西不一样， 它特别的东方化， 在材料上给人这种感受， 另外还有一种在文化上给人的联想。 所以， 这件作品在那个方位都占全了。 在七十年代， 人们常强调艺术的纯粹形式和审美观照， 排除它的文化暗示或象征， 刚好他的竹子就有这样的象征。

梁钜辉： 我第一件作品的镜子和“柜子”，“柜子”是似柜非柜， 我把它刷得工工整整， 在一些小方洞里鑲上小镜子， 和大面镜子组成一个很平常的空间， 所要做的就象一个装修工人干的活。 第二件作品， 我利用竹子、 灯和藤箩做成一个很大的工艺品， 就是如此而已。

林一林： 从梁钜辉的第一件镜子的作品到第二件作品的竹子， 如果按照一种标准来说， 证明这个艺术家跳跃得很利害， 这样很容易会令人产生一种感觉， 他这样的反复是在一个怎么样的基础上，是对原来的东西的肯定？ 还是否定？从他自己的阐述来看， 象他这样的面貌的艺术家还是很少见。他在做作品的过程中没有任何对艺术品很纯粹的想法， 他只是想去做某一件事情。 在工作过程中， 他没有脱离他自己对事物的认识， 很尊重自己所想做的——对工艺本身的关心。 这显得作品很地道，那么，就不存在面貌上的变化所带来的不稳定因素。

陈劭雄： 梁钜辉两次作品之间的跳跃， 不是在材料上进行延续， 而是在启用新材料方面的延续， 这就是一种连贯性。

林一林： 他对物质的庸俗化， 可能他自己不一定意识到， 这种非意识就具有价值。 如果不是这样， 很有可能重复了西方当代艺术家所做的事情， 例如杰夫•库恩斯对庸俗的关心， Pierre & gilles 的照片， 他们所做的是在于对事情的敏感， 而梁钜辉的作品不是庸俗意识的产物。

梁钜辉： 我喜欢通过我的工作把平常的材料变成很工艺的、完整的东西， 不是艺术上的完美， 是工艺活的完美。

徐坦： 刚才林一林的判断是有道理的。 我从梁钜辉的竹子作品， 看到一种堕落的感觉， 而这种堕落跟杰夫•库恩斯的堕落是不同的， 杰夫•库恩斯摆出一种故意要堕落， 多少有一些矫揉造作， 而梁巨辉在艺术上的堕落倾向是怀着一种美好心情， 喜不自胜， 喜滋滋地往那里走去了。 我觉得这是一种特别纯真的堕落， 可能这个词你不喜欢啊。

梁钜辉： 没有！ 很喜欢！ 我非常喜欢！艺术就好象某一个人买了油漆把家里的柜子刷了， 刷到平整， 我喜欢这种工作。

陈劭雄： 很由衷的。

梁钜辉： 好像皮鞋脏了，把它擦得亮亮的。

陈劭雄： 很堕落！ 擦得亮到堕落为止， 哈哈！

林一林： 我觉得梁钜辉的作品跟杰夫•库恩斯、沙夫是反过来的， 其实他的想法跟波依斯更接近。

徐坦： 就是！ 只不过表现上的梁钜辉不会跟别人洗脚， 但会跟自己擦皮鞋， 擦得很亮。

梁钜辉： 擦皮鞋也是艺术。

林一林： 这是艺术家说的语言。

徐坦： 对！ 这种语言是令中国绝大部分艺术家感到恐惧的语言。 很多艺术家很害怕看到梁钜辉整天跑去装修， 而且迈着欢乐的步子去装修， 去找人要帐， 当然是不是有放高利贷就不清楚了。 所以， 这对艺术来讲， 完全是个大屠杀， 作为艺术杀手的梁钜辉， 我觉得是最伟大的艺术家。

陈劭雄： 哈哈！

徐坦： “大尾象工作组” 的成员距离是很大的， 陈劭雄与梁钜辉就很不一样。陈劭雄是很深入严肃、学者型的艺术家， 他的作品对时间的考虑， 有一种特别严谨的逻辑含义。 时间对于人类生存是一个迷， 时间和生命， 时间和宇宙的本体， 某种东西我们是说不清楚的。 你觉得呢？ 你谈谈这方面的问题。

陈劭雄： 我作品里的时间， 我不想把它上升到这么严肃的哲学问题上来考虑， 我想把时间说得很简单， 非常具体。 这种时间跟大部份学者所关注的时间不一样， 它跟生命和宇宙没有任何关系， 而且， 这个时间在这件作品里的具体关系中， 它才有意思。 也就是说， 这个时间跟我们的生活和生命是分开的， 它象真空里的时间， 跟空气没有关系。 通常的时间概念是绵绵不断的，无始无终， 但在我的作品里， 时间是有始有终， 几天就是几天， 几个小时就是几个小时， 这种时间是从我个人的生活抽离出来的片断。

徐坦： 从陈劭雄的作品里， 感觉到有一点不协调的——彩色光管的形态和时间的意识。 那么很多人是不是会认为不理想呢？ 就我来讲， 这是我就喜欢的地方， 为什么？ 我老是觉得我们生活中的不协调， 也许你做作品的时候没有这样想， 但我相信某种东西是进入不能意识的……, 就是进入非意识的状态里， 这种不协调是我们生活中的特点， 而做出来以后， 有一种强奸别人的心理和感官， 我就是让你感觉到这种……, 看了光管以后还要别人去看板子上的时间。 彩色光管有一种奢华的感觉， 加上时间的某种东西以后， 再看就有一种毁灭感， 或者是一种不长久的感觉， 它预示某种危机。

陈劭雄： 奥巴拉克的时间是客观生活的时间， 而我在作品里是逃避这种客观时间， 进入另外的时间里。假如一个人休克了几天， 这个人休克的那天是十号， 醒过来的时候是十七号， 这个人感觉到的十七号应该是十一号， 而不是十七号， 这段时间是生活空白， 跟生活中的客观时间没有关系。 我作品里的时间构造了一种逃避的环境和机制， 让你在里面感觉到你的生活跟客观生活有很大的距离， 但我不知道那种更真实。

徐坦： 你的意思是说： 这样的时间特别缺乏永恒？

陈劭雄： 在一个限定的具体时间框架里， 在这里面说不定是另外一种永恒， 这种永恒就象放在冰霜里冻结了的东西。

林一林：人是可以通过观察自己的生理和自然界的变化， 感觉到时间的存在， 我想动物是不可能觉察它的年龄问题， 它在这个世界里生存了多长时间，这是有关人性和动物性的区别。 出于生活的需要， 人类确立了时间的概念， 发明了计算时间的方法， 人才意识到被规定了的时间。

徐坦： 动物没有时间意识， 人有时间意识， 那么实际上时间并不是必然存在， 是意识到的某种东西， 意识对它的反作用是很利害的， 如果要切割， 冻结它， 那是你意识的权利， 也是你感知的权利。

林一林： 你的作品就存在展览的时间里， 就是你命名的七天和72个半小时， 当这个时间过去了， … … 。

陈劭雄： 那就是作品的尸体。

梁钜辉： 陈劭雄的作品把时间压缩了， 把时间的观念明确化。

徐坦： 所有人在做作品的时间里会赋予很大的意义， 在我做作品的这一分钟、一秒钟都是正的生活， 就是一种增加的意义。 但在陈劭雄的作品里是反过来的， 它是一个负的， 刚好是一段无意义的时间， 没有时间的时间， 是一种时间的虚脱和停顿。 别人在工作的那段时间， 要引起世人的关注和投入意义， 他刚好要消灭这种意义。 他在做作品的时候感觉到一种非生活， 也就感觉到的是非时间， 这提供了新的角度去观察时间和生活。

梁钜辉： 现在让林一林谈谈这一次他在欧洲所做的作品。

林一林： 在欧洲短短的几个月里， 我发现自己对艺术问题的看法已经脱离以前对形式的热衷， 如建筑形式和雕塑形式。 对形式不是不闻不问， 而是把它作为艺术品的某种组织去对待， 我更关注事物本身和本质的东西， 这是我的转变。 从鹿特丹的作品 ［墙自己］， 我就做出相应的调整。

徐坦： 你的这件作品在前面我已经说过了， 作品的题目是［墙自己］， 我同时感受到另外一个说法， 你好像在说一个潜台词： 艺术和它自己。 这是共通的， 刚好这个题目暗示了这样一个涵义。 在我的印象中， 你的工作很多都是关于艺术它自己这样的一个东西。 你很清楚指出了艺术更重要的就是它自己。

陈劭雄： 假如你的作品的名字说成是筑成墙的材料它自己会怎么样？ 墙是由每块砖砌成， 砖是一种材料， 墙自己跟墙的材料它自己， 这个问题你是怎么考虑。

林一林： 91年做［理想住宅标准系列］的时候， 我对材料已经是很关注。 材料之间产生的共鸣， 这个是我以前关心的问题， 一种物质与另一种物质的结合构成新物， 所能引起的共鸣在视觉上对观众的冲击是很强烈的。 墙是砖构成的形态， 砖的意义是在于要做墙， 砖还有另外引伸的意义， 就是把别的东西垫高， 它不是砖的主要功能。 所以谈墙其实也是在谈砖， 我更关注砖， 但砖摆出来的是墙的形态， 我取的题目就无关紧要了。 比如谈人的因素， 人是由细胞， 或者说是某种元素， 水份， 有机物构成的。 我们要谈一个具体的人， 可以搬开人的构造的共性去谈具体的人， 其实我更关注人里面的东西所构成人的意义。

陈劭雄： 就是它的要素。

林一林： 在艺术上反映出来的， 不可能象一个哲学家， 把本质的东西端给观众去看。 如果把本质的东西直接端给观众， 艺术所能让观众填充的成份已经没有了， 这样的东西不是艺术， 这样的东西很有可能更接近科学，或者是哲学。

陈劭雄： 其他艺术家所采用的材料， 是用这些材料再做它物， 你是拿这种东西还是做成这种东西， 你的材料是赤裸裸暴露出来了， 而不是赋予材料某种文化的意义， 或者把生活经历和人的经验投射在材料上。

林一林： 我作品里的墙似乎跟一般的墙没有太大的区别， 由于我把某种理念贯注进去， 这堵墙才与一般的墙产生差异， 我想表现得并不是特别的墙， 我是用这种差异说明墙本身具有人们平时没有注意到的事实。

徐坦： 实际上看到这面墙和装着水的塑料袋， 初看有一种抗拒心理， 不能接受这种状况。 水袋是危险品， 它会漏出水， 让人有不安全、不放心的感觉。 在视觉上很对立， 这种对立还不是颜色里的补色关糸， 这种对立是不能接受的对立， 指出了艺术语言的思索， 起码是一种震撼。

林一林： 艺术家有了一个与众不同的观念， 转变成具体的作品， 并产生让人吃惊的效果。 这个过程中， 除了观念本身， 还有很多巧合的因素， 比如说制作过程对瞬间东西的把握， 对物质材料的敏感， 怎样通过对物质材料的重组把你的观念强化、突出， 这些都是技术上的问题， 很个人的技术语汇。 作品令观众吃惊与观众的生活经验也很有关系， 平常人对墙都具有一般的体验和常识， 所以， 看我作品中的墙有悖于常理， 他们才感到惊异， 如果一个人没有看过任何墙， 当看我的墙的时候是不会大惊小怪。

陈劭雄： 其实就是一种心理预期。

林一林： 我现在的目的并不是非要争取一个吃惊， 如果作品除此之外， 里面缺少一个强有力的支撑物， 那么它的生命力是很值得怀疑的。 我着重把某些内容赋予给物质的特别意义， 所产生的形式也许让人吃惊， 也许观众对作品的深入了解后， 对作品的平凡而感到吃惊。

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We thank the individuals and institutions that shared their recordings with us.

In this growing report for post, Superpool surveys urban developments in Istanbul. This content was commissioned as part of the research for the 2014 MoMA exhibition Uneven Growth, Tactical Urbanisms for Expanding Megacities, curated by Pedro Gadanho (Curator, Architecture and Design).

1. Shell

Taycan looks at the impact of the massive growth of the city’s population and questions the viability of the new living spaces presented to us. The mass migration toward Istanbul since the 1950s has exposed the city to unplanned urbanization; a constant need for new buildings to accommodate the population has transformed the city periphery into a huge construction site. This transformation can be witnessed at the urban border in its most vulnerable and raw state, where the scene is far from optimistic. Environmental sustainability is not taken into account, and new areas of development are far from the familiar dynamics of the city. The carved mine sites, which provide the origins of construction material, mark the wounds of the city. Serkan Taycan represents Istanbul as a dystopia stuck in this vicious cycle of construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction. He combines different endpoints of the city in diptychs and triptychs merging time and space. In this way, his photographs become personal interventions into the topography of these places and propose alternatives for the current city image.

GUP Magazine: http://www.gupmagazine.com/

www.serkantaycan.com

2. Not a farewell at all

Inonu Stadium, demolished in the summer of 2013, was one of Turkey’s oldest sports stadiums and is an integral part of the country’s sports history. Home to the Besiktas soccer club, one of Turkey’s biggest soccer teams, the stadium opened on November 27, 1947 with a match against AIK Solna (Sweden). The Democratic Party changed its name to Mithatpasa Stadium in 1952; later, it was known as Dolmabahce Stadium; and then in 1973 it regained its original name. In 2009, _The Times_ ranked it fourth among the world’s ten most beautiful stadiums. Plans to renovate the stadium were approved by the Council of Monuments in May 2013. The match between Besiktas and Genclerbirligi on May 11, 2013, was the last to be played in the original Inonu Stadium. The stadium served as a home for fans of the local team. Until recently, the Besiktas club had resisted pressure to become financially oriented, while other teams in the country went about rebuilding their stadiums. However, this year the club approved the construction of a larger, modern stadium with more seats and luxurious private rooms. Inonu Stadium was demolished in July, and the site is now being prepared for construction. Fans fear that the state will appropriate the land because of its desirable location in the center of Istanbul near the Bosphorus strait and the Dolmabahçe Palace. In recent years, the cultural life of Istanbul has been affected by the loss of movie theaters, cafes, and bookstores—sites that hold public memories—which have been razed and replaced by shopping malls. With increasing real estate speculation in the city, there are fears that at the last minute the stadium’s land could be designated for other uses, as when the government attempted to situate a shopping mall and hotel in Gezi Park. The Gezi protest started two weeks after the last game in Inonu Stadium, and the Besikats fan club Carsi was one of the leading groups involved in saving the park. This video documents the last chance to be there, to take a piece back home (chairs, field, grass…), to talk about memories and say goodbye. As filmmakers, photographers and Besiktas fans, members of the NARPhotos Collective wished to bear witness to this.

3. Istanbul Eats

First started as a blog in 2009 by Americans Ansel Mullins and Yigal Schleifer, Istanbul Eats was created with a dual purpose. On the most basic level, the blog was designed to be a guide that helps visitors to Istanbul find their way to the city’s best local, authentic, and traditional restaurants and food makers, the kinds of places that are often very hard to find on one’s own. On a deeper level, though, Istanbul Eats was created to help celebrate, support, and preserve these types of places, many of them small-scale, family-run businesses, by introducing them to a new audience—both foreign and domestic.

In a rapidly changing and economically dynamic city like Istanbul, many of these traditional food spots were finding themselves unable to compete and often left behind. Istanbul Eats tries to remind those who live in Istanbul and, more importantly, those who make decisions about the city’s future, that culinary tradition and those who uphold it are as essential a part of a city’s fabric as new roads, buildings, and infrastructure projects.

Read the reviews here:
Şahin Lokantası: Edible Complex
Çakmak: Breakfast of Şampiyons
Özbek Sofrası: A Higher Plov

4. BAS Center for Artists’ Books and Publications

Since 2006, artist Banu Cennetoğlu has been running the space BAS in Istanbul, where local and international artists’ books and publications are collected, displayed and produced. With a permanent display area in the space, the aim is to create an awareness of the medium and to encourage the public to explore printed matter.

Between 2006 and 2009, BAS published Bent, a series of artists’ books co-edited by Banu Cennetoğlu and Philippine Hoegen. To support a local production and generate a discussion on the context of bookworks, Bent deliberately focused on collaborations with artists from Turkey and created titles by 4 artists and 1 artist collective. Philippine moved to Brussels in 2011, and the production of the Bent series was ceased, but projects that resulted from or relate to the project still continue.

In 2007, the hugely successful An Interrupted History of Punk and Underground Resources in Turkey 1978-1999, edited by Sezgin Boynik and Tolga Güldallı, was published by BAS.

Since December 2009, a series of talks and archival exhibitions has been taking place at BAS. In September 2013, an exhibition of Old News archive (2004- ) was followed by a talk by its founder, curator Jacob Fabricius.

www.b-a-s.info

5. Zumbara: Istanbul-based time-banking

Zumbara is a platform where groups and individuals can pool and trade experiences and skills, using time instead of money as the unit of currency based on the principle, “We have what we need if we use what we have”. To give an example, Mary shows how to make his own web page to David for 2 hours, earns 2 hour in return, spends 1 hour on having her washing machine fixed and the other hour by having her wedding playlist organized by someone else. While time banking is being practiced in many countries to strengthen local communities, Zumbara brings the combination of this system with a social network: Time Bank 2.0. Zumbara aims to foster a two-sided gift culture: “To begin with, each of us has a unique gift, which seeks continuously to be realized and expressed. When given the chance, this gift flows naturally and that which we give somehow comes back to us. Secondly, when we share our gifts with others, we experience a feeling of unity. Thanks to the social technologies that exist in today’s world, the gift economy and sharing culture is being practiced – every day – by huge numbers of people, resulting in major changes in behavior patterns … Our goal is to prompt people to question whether they need to be money dependent. We offer a glimpse into a world where sharing and collaboration has the potential to create self-sufficient communities. In monthly events, Zumbara asks people to bring food that they cook, things (e.g., clothes, books), and services/expertise that they want to share with others. Together, they form an open bazaar, where people organize yoga classes, make music, and talk about their experiences in film, sports etc. The content of every gathering is a total surprise but through each, people connect in meaningful ways. Zumbara was founded by Meltem Şendağ and Ayşegül Güzel.

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