Manners and accessions: Izcue
2017
Hand embroidered vintage Recuay weave, 165 × 176 cm
Andres Pereira Paz (1986) works with the constant shifts in senses of identity that come with the endless fluctuation of people and narratives. His works examine the role that pre-Hispanic and postcolonial arts and crafts play in the construction of cultural identity. Appropriating Andean imagery, he explores how the collective and individual can both support and undermine one another. Often involving textiles and appropriated imagery, his work relies on archival studies and historical research.
Manners and Accessions: Izcue is a work based on Pereira Paz’s research into the revival of traditional Andean weaving patterns and motifs. In 1926, the Peruvian artist Elena Izcue published a pedagogical guide that traced traditional motifs from Incan weaving traditions, setting them out so that children could recognise the language. Although the Pre-Colombian motifs were meant for a target audience of children in Peru, the book was published in Paris. This anomaly is due to the fact that it was only when Peruvian artists travelled to Paris—the de facto cultural capital of the time—and encountered the artists of the avant-garde that the revival and re-appropriation of their own regional indigenous culture became valued. It took the distance of Paris for Peruvian artists to reclaim their identity; the process within Peru would only develop in later decades, once they had returned.
andrespereirapaz.com