Originally conceived as an intervention for urban space, this work is part of a series that operates under the general title Stereo Reality. The work takes on the buried myth of the Inca King and the contemporary rumor regarding the redemption of the last Inca and its torn Andean empire after the Spanish invasion and conquest of Peru. According to the legend, the sectioned pieces of the executed Inca will be reconstituted together with its defeated Empire. The photograph of a manicured tree sculpted into the shape of an Incan head –like the many sculpted trees seen today in public spaces in Peru, based on national allegories– shares the exhibition space with an Internet search mechanism that emits random texts related to the word inkarri [“Inca king”] and, in a certain way, speculates on the use of language and the meanings involved in the production of this image. However, few things appear random in this encounter between the decorative head and the Internet, since in this assemblage various other redemptions seem to occur or, at least, to emphasize the great symbolic, historic and cultural distances (oral-traditional vs. lettered-colonial; popular visual vs. global technification), of a foundational national spectrum that has been cut into pieces and polarized, like that which currently defines, as always, the country of Peru. (TC)
Details