Different interpretations of the lifestyles and cosmovisions of the peoples of ancient Peru have been created on pre-Columbian ceramics. Many of the techniques and motifs of this practice are preserved to this day as part of the knowledge of communities throughout the country and are a fundamental element of identity. On the other hand, ceramics, in general, allows us to establish connections with diverse aspects of our daily life and multiple areas of human knowledge. Thus, it is linked to basic needs -as a container for food and beverages or as a construction element- as well as to ritual and funerary practices, and it is also understood as scientific knowledge and as art. It is therefore a material that has made possible the generation of historical discourses and is related to the preservation of cultural memory. Its multiple nature makes it a fertile component for the creation of artistic proposals that propose critical perspectives on current social and political conditions, and on the way in which historical narratives have been constituted.
The works of the Peruvian artists in this exhibition are based on pre-Columbian ceramics and the traditional practices related to it. This group of artists, for example, updates the themes and the pre-Columbian imaginary and the narratives of origin of various communities, from contemporary perspectives that reflect on our conceptions of history, time and mythology. Ceramics are not only included to think about how they were made, their usefulness and function, but also to understand this material as a means to affirm ideas and generate questions. These proposals propose to change the way we look at utilitarian objects and their identitary charges, to question gender stereotypes and social imperatives, and to affirm ceramics as a space for self-representation and a place for the generation of utopian views of our past projected into the future. Some of these works recover the healing dimension of this practice and propose to think of the body itself as a vessel that we have forgotten and need to take into account again. Another group of works confronts us with a mythology that, in the 21st century, formulates other ways of understanding the way we relate to our own environment. They give shape to a time made of clay. They take up images from the past, bring them to the present and transform them by recovering their own and collective corporeality, sound, movement, the everyday and myth. In this way, they affirm the need to rethink the relationships that have been established with the body, with tradition and history in this time of ours.
