Venuca Evanán at Enhorabuena Espacio, Madrid

We are very happy to share the solo exhibition and workshop of Sarhua Boards by the artist Venuca Evanán at Enhorabuena, Madrid. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Europe.

I

Rebeca Carrión Cachot was a disciple of Julio C. Tello, the first indigenous archaeologist in America. She was a university professor and director of the Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology of Peru, which her mentor founded in 1924.

The rise of Peruvian Anthropology was not without the values of its time, such that representations related to rituals and sexuality were destroyed and/or fragmented. The so-called “aberrant huacos” met this fate due to the fear of creating a degrading and animalistic view of early Peruvians. Apparently, Rebeca Carrión Cachot, among other anthropologists, in their desire to preserve indigenous dignity, destroyed part of their legacy.

II

The native peoples of the Andes, who survived the eradication of idolatries and the replacement of their beliefs and customs during the colonial period, have kept their culture alive by making the foreign their own. They created a stronghold where they safeguard their customs along with the foreign ones, in a process that continues to this day. An example of this is the current clothing of Andean populations, which retains similarities to the typical costumes of the towns of Castile. What we call “autochthonous” has different intensities and facets, sometimes uniting us and at other times separating us, reconciling us or offending us.

III

The Sarhua boards, a pictorial tradition from this region in the southern highlands of Peru, may also have their origin in the colonial period. Their original purpose was to serve as a reminder of the celebrations surrounding the communal construction of a house. This gift was placed on the roof of the new building as part of the ritual called “Tabla Apaykuy.”

During the 1980s and 1990s, due to the violence experienced in Peru, highland populations moved to coastal cities, following a migration that had begun in the 1970s. It was in this new environment that the Sarhua boards began to depict the life, celebrations, and rituals of the land they had left behind.

IV

Venuca Evanán is the daughter of settlers who migrated to Lima in the 1950s. She was born and lives in a space where Andean and coastal norms begin to clash and grow more complex. In her work, which continues the tradition of Sarhua boards, aspects of life, particularly of the feminine world, appear, which were invisible in traditional representations. This places her in an ambiguous space of belonging, both as an artist and as a Sarhuina.

V

In the Andean world, animals, plants, and stones are beings with different powers, and their relationship with humans must be understood from this perspective. That is why sexual representations with animals, for example, should not be read as faithful copies of reality, but rather as encounters with these powers that move through these materials.

The female body is also a territory through which these powers can and must pass, so its representation on the boards is not only a possibility but also a place for denunciation when these bodies are desecrated, plundered, or made invisible, when decisions are made about their rest or fertility.

VI

In Venuca Evanán’s work, life, desire, reality, myth, and denunciation inhabit the same surface, dressed in the same colors. Her work is part of a tradition with which she also clashes, which she also questions and disobeys.

But which she also cares for and protects, and which, in turn, cares for and protects her.

Wearing traditional costumes and expressing herself through the Sarhua boards constitute activism in the face of a society that delegitimizes what is different and demands its subordination.

Putting her body on the line, not only in the protests she participates in, under the slogans she sings, but also as an individual citizen in the streets or inside an art gallery, is part of an activism that calmly and openly asserts her difference.

VIII

I would like to hear Rebeca and Venuca converse.

IX

Venuca, a Limeña and Sarhuina, is in Castile.

-Sandra Gamarra Heshiki