This is Not Archaeology | Coleccin Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

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This is Not Archaeology

Notes on the Peruvian desert
MAY 14, 2014

LIMA Lima sprawls over an arid landscapebetween the ocean and the mountainsfull of pre-hispanic remnants
forgotten by modernity, that are now reappearing like palimpsests in the fog of a capital city that is characterized by its
historic fusion. The citys and its cultures complexity, the successive layers established within a territory, determine the
concerns about territory, identity and the value of objects in our culture.

Huaca Pucllana, distrito de Miraflores, Lima. Photo: Elena Damiani

Limas intricate and singular urban agglomeration is conformed by huacas (archeological sites such as temples and other
sacred spaces) that are found among residential areasconcrete buildings that announce the economic prosperity of the
last decade, and improvised or partially completed structures, crystallizing multiple identities in a difficult-to-define
panorama. How is our understanding of the urban fabric constructed in a city where historical sites emerge or disintegrate
within a multiplicity of buildings?
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There are various artists whose practices share similarities with spatial-temporal research about understanding the
landscape as a territory full of the pasts reverberations. In their work, retrospection is not an exercise for reconstruction, but
rather to represent, save for the stereotypical forms or idealizations that museumize the pastmodern dangers that are
very popular in countries such as ours, where the past is frequently used to nurture an identity based on ancestral roots.
The exhibitions Ruins in Reverse (organized by the Tate Modern and MALI) and Todo lo slido (Everything Solid) by Iosu
Aramburu describe a territory where ruinsarcheological or contemporaryare the starting point to create fictions or
images that fluctuate between an ancestral past and an uncertain future.

Ruins in Reverse at MALI (Museo de Arte de Lima), 2013. Estructuras conjugadas by Jos Carlos Martinat. Gold aluminum structure.
Image: Musuk Nolte. Courtesy of the artist and MALI

In the exhibition Doble Horizonte (Double Horizon), Alejandro Jaime proposes to recognize the city of Lima as a living
memory, stripped of the solemnity and historical distance with which we have been taught. Using formal and conceptual
relationships, Jaime considers the huaca as an intermediary state between two places that he identifies as landmarks of
power: the Cerro San Cristbal and the Government Palace.

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Alejandro Jaime, Horizonte Intermedio I, 2013. Ink, pencil and oil on paper. Courtesy of the artist.

Alejandro Jaime, Doble Horizonte II, 2013. Dirt, clay. Courtesy of the artist.

Armando Andrade Tudelas work transcribes landscapes to 16mm film to transport the spectator to places with collective
significance to reflect on the role of objects and the processes of constructing meaning within our culture. In the film
Marcahuasi, the camera meanders through a forest of rocks located to the east of Lima, where the natural geological
formations act like sculptures. In this way, he formulates questions regarding how objects are classified and how they
acquire significance in the history of art.

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Armando Andrade Tudela, Marcahuasi, 2010. 16mm transfered to digital, 10.37 mins. Courtesy of the artist

Armando Andrade Tudela, Marcahuasi, 2010. 16mm transfered to digital, 10.37 mins. Courtesy of the artist

Armando Andrade Tudela, Sin Ttulo (MX) 2. Concrete, plexiglass, ratan, aluminum. Courtesy of the artist

Ishmael Randall Weeks constructs a model of bricks and wooden stretcherssimilar in form to the pre-Columbian
dwellings in the coasts of Peruwhich are later eroded with sand. Huaca appears to be a maquette where the dialogue
between construction and deconstruction, permanence and dissipation, converge to create a view of what could be a
dystopian city full of niches, or a lonely building in ruins that rests on the ground.

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Ishmael Randall Weeks, Huaca, 2010. Eroded bricks, wooden stretchers. Courtesy of the artist

Ishmael Randall Weeks, Quoin, 2013. Newspaper, photo transfers on intervened paper, wood table. Courtesy of the artist

The contemporary ruin also serves as a tool to articulate questions about permanence and the ephemeral character of manmade structures and the value of historic monuments. This is the case with the series Monuments by Pablo Hare, who
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documents the wave of new, ludicrous monuments erected over the past two decades in Peru. The series includes a
dinosaur in the desert, and a statue of Miguel Grau that looks out to the Pacific from the Ancash beachesall part of a
symbolic vocabulary that becomes a social and popular narrative in public spaces.

Pablo Hare, Monumentos. Giganotosaurus, Valle de Majes, Arequipa, 2006. Courtesy of the artist

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Pablo Hare, Monumentos. Abancay #2, Apurmac, 2010. Courtesy of the artist

Pablo Hare, Monumentos. Miguel Grau, Baha Tortugas, Ancash, 2008. Courtesy of the artist

The installation El Pueblo Libre by Raura Oblitas gathers a series of sculptures that, as structural elements of incomplete
buildings, announce the failings of architectural projects that were paralyzed before completion.

Raura Oblitas, El Pueblo Libre, 2013. Dyed wax on aluminum, concrete, corrugated steel, soldered metal. Courtesy of the artist and Galera
80m2 Livia Benavides

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Raura Oblitas, Autoridad y proteccin, 2014. Soldered metal, concrete, dyed wax on aluminum. Courtesy of the artista and Galera 80m2
Livia Benavides

In recent years, Iosu Aramburu has been researching various ideas about constructed space, time, and modernity by looking
at architecture and how its conceived, built, transformed, and destroyed. In the series Fantasmagoras, the promise of the
countrys modern project crumbles in front of us in ink drawings that illustrate the icons of contemporary Peruvian
architecture, disappearing on paper.

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Iosu Aramburu, Fantasmagora XLIII, 2014. Ink on paper. Courtesy of the artist

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Iosu Aramburu, Fantasmagora XLVI, 2014. Ink on paper. Courtesy of the artist

Whether by taking archeological sites or urban ruins as a starting point, these practices look at the past to examine and
rewrite concerns that are embedded in deep layers of our culture. Their representations are far from nostalgic searches that
attempt to rescue time past. On the contrary, they are proposals that allow space for new questions about the territorys
surface.

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