Mortars are manual tools employed in various collective rituals of pre-Columbian societies. Their use varies from religious ceremonies to food and medicine preparation. Through them, we extract the essences that plants and minerals have created from their interaction with the sun, water and soil.

Nourishment, healing, and ritual are all contained within a single, three-concavity object. It is through the extraction of living substances, colored dyes, flavors, scents and remedies that our body – with a repetitive and rhythmic movement – relates to an ancient ritual.

We excavate the earth crust to find sediments and decipher the discontinuous process of stratigraphy. Each strata is like the fiber of a mineral tissue. The vegetables fossilize and settle in the form of mineral remains; the mineral is absorbed by plants and becomes nourishment for animals. One becomes the footprint of the other in a continuous tissue.

Knitting relates us to our surroundings.

Everywhere there exist different fibers, and particular techniques and uses have developed for each one of them. Natives have developed varied skills to work animal furs and plant-based fibers. Some know how to embroider, others weave on looms and create other basketry products. Fibers can grow in different places, but with changes to their toughness, density and color. Where junco grows, baskets are woven; tapestries are made where there is totora and hats were there is toquilla. Different fibers and techniques in each place.

Fibers follow organic shapes and take on the shape of the body they cover when knit. A basket is woven around a mold, just like the tree bark folds around the trunk, or geological layers surround and cover the earth. The tissue folds; it covers us and protects us. It is the surface that surrounds us.

In a loom, animal fibers, plant dyes and mineral pigments become a single tissue. The fibers and threads bend, dye and intertwine one over the other in a discontinuous or interlayered fashion, forming different patterns. Each pattern creates a unique texture in the surface. The artisans understand this process and mold the place’s memory with their hands. As makers, they are able to understand the transformation of the material they employ, which begins in the place where the fibers grow, all the way to the moment in which their hands compose them and give them the finishing touch.

To look into the place is to unravel its image. To peel its layers and the footprints of time to find the fibers and patterns that have formed. To unravel the image is to dismember it in touch-sensitive fibers. It is to penetrate into the skin of the visible surface and understand the manual and bodily processes through which it was formed. To relearn the artisans’ labor means reestablishing contact with these processes. It means understanding there is a footprint left by the body and nature behind that image.

The present worldview of our urban landscape and inhabited spaces is configured by the Western ideal of modernity that replaced artisanal construction systems and natural materials with industrial processes and new materials.

Bricks are the generic construction element that constitute this urban worldview. Moreover, in Perú, its image is linked to the country-to-city migration phenomena that began in the forties last century and brought about the construction of new collective spaces in Lima’s periphery, new urban centers in many regions outside the capital and new ways to self-build homes.

Ladrillos de piedra (Bricks of stone) approaches the concept of construction materials to pose the question: is there a continuity between the materiality of natural territory and the materiality of the urban space?

The pieces suggest a recovery of our relation to the territory’s density, along with its worldview and history. By acknowledging specific materials from places in the Peruvian Andes – such as Ayacucho, Junin and Ancash -, thes bricks establish a continuity between the material and its habitat, while simultaneously questioning the fragile balance between the natural processes that shape the landscape, visible in its constant transformation and sedimentation through time, and the relentless extraction, production and construction systems developed by humans.

Ladrillos de piedra confronts the basic construction element of industrial production and its artisanally crafted replicas with local stones to meditate on the way we construct our spaces within the context of accelerated urban growth that Peru has experienced since the last century.

The work disassembles and questions the value given to the specific, on one hand, and the generic, on the other. The work disrupts the homogenizing identity of brick as a construction module and points us to the unstable, changing and diverse character of the natural surrounding.

The materiality of the pieces harkens back to the lythic composition of our Andean territory and its manual traditions. Peru’s lytic tradition goes back to the pre-Columbian period, a time when it was common to develop technologies based on natural materials afforded by the territory. However, starting with the colonial era, these materials and relationships gradually declined into disuse.

Artisanal work in stone is also a way to spark a conversation about our history. The work alludes to lytic constructions and the symbollic reconstruction of a space, raising stone so that we can relate to the images of our fading architectural heritage.

Ladrillos de piedra was exhibited was during the Art Lima 2019 international art fair at Grau Galleria’s stand, a space dedicated to contemporary art located in Barranco district, Lima, Perú.

Ana Teresa Barboza and Rafael Freyre seek to restore the symbolic value of water with and installation that combines art, design and crafts, based on an investigation of peruvian wetlands and traditional technologies for water treatment.

The societies that have inhabited the Peruvian desert have been obliged to establish a relationship with water given its scarcity. This allowed them to understand the water ecosystem and to develop technologies for the appropriate management of this valuable resource. In this way, they could inhabit arid terrestrial spaces, making them urban spaces and agricultural lands.

Throughout the pre-Columbian period, local cultures developed various systems of irrigation, capture and purification of water, such as puquios, pits, cultivation terraces and filtering galleries. A system that has drawn our attention, amongst the many, was the wachaque, a canal system that was used in the desert to plant and extract the totora and reed plants. These fibres grow naturally in the coast’s wetlands and serve to make utensils, furniture and architectural elements such as shicras. In addition, they have also been useful to purify water. Totora and reed are phytodepuration plants that contain rhizomes that grow parallel to the soil’s surface and absorb organic matter from the water.

The Project Water Ecosystem is an installation designed for the visitor to recognize this system and its processes, which involve the collection and purification of water, considering first and foremost the vegetable species which already fulfil these functions: the air plants, like the tillandsias, which capture the humidity of foggy areas and the water plants that inhabit the wetlands, such as totora and reed (junco), and the cleaning of their waters through their stems and roots. In this way, the installation integrates natural elements with ancestral and contemporary technologies of water management, with the intention of recovering this knowledge and projecting towards new practices in the future.

We are interested in recovering the relationship with the ecosystems of our territory, understanding their interactions and transformations. Likewise, we seek to create a ritual space with water, to restore its symbolic value within our communities and daily life. Water moves, flows and evaporates, changes constantly, like us. Through it, we can reflect and understand the cycles and transformations that we inhabit.

Ana Teresa Barboza
Rafael Freyre

“Ecosistema del agua” (Water Ecosystem) is the winning project of MAC LIMA National Prize Art and Innovation 2019. The museum called for artists and peruvian creators with proposals that innovate establishing relations between art, science and technology. The open call invited interdisciplinary projects that responded to technology in a wide sense: from recovery and appropriation of practices or traditional techniques, up till new media, and that take over contemporary society challenges with an artistic and critical vision. 

After an exhaustive selection from the jury consisting of Natalija Boljsakov (Perú), Inti Guerrero (Colombia), Francesco Mariotti (Suiza) y Sanjay Sarma (India), MAC Lima choose Ecosistema del agua as the winning project. Moreover, there were two honorary mentions: Isla de Huacos by Camilo Nunas Ángeles Manga and Lorena Jiménez Lira, and Recirculación del flujo by  Genietta Varsi, Nicola Varsi Lari and Gustavo Lari Rincón.

MAC LIMA National Prize Art and Innovation is an effort of the museum to contribute to the development of local contemporary art, with the support of Universidad de Ingeniería y Tecnología (UTEC) and under the sponsorship of BBVA Foundation of Lima.

The activities surrounding the exhibition “Water Ecosystem” revolved around one question: How can we apply knowledge of the natural world into art? And, how can the coastal landscape, water sources and management and vegetable fibers from the wetlands be incorporated into art, design and architecture projects in a sustainable manner?

Guided visit
Ana Teresa Barboza and Rafael Freyre hosted a guided visit where they shared the reflections and insights gained during the installation assembly process, as well as answering questions from the assistants. Barboza and Freyre’s first collaborative work was 2017’s Destejer la Imagen (Unweave the Image), a series of pieces made from natural fibers and local rock types. Together, they have since explored the relationship between body and ecosystem, driven by a common interest in natural materials, artisanal traditions and the history that forms in each place. This way, they developed a particular interest in the wetlands and the link between pre-Hispanic civilizations and the coastal ecosystems of Peru.

Water sources: Technologies for water care and filtering

A panel discussion by Marino Morikawa, an environmentalist and scientist, and Arturo Alfaro, activist and director for NGO VIDA, about the issues affecting the wetlands and other natural water sources in Peru. Marino is a specialist in wetland and lake recovery by means of bio- and nanotechnologies. Arturo is dedicated to the betterment of public health conditions and is the national coordinator for the international Coastal and River Cleanup Campaign.

Junco and totora basketry laboratory

The Goicochea brothers hosted a junco and totora basketry workshop. Samuel, Ever and David are the collaborating artists behind the woven junco and totora pieces in “Water Ecosystem”. The family tradition was passed on to them by their parents, who were traditional matara and junco weavers from Cajamarca. Presently, the whole family shares a workshop in Lima where they work both together and independently.

Junco and totora designs

An exhibition and discussion featuring researcher Samuel Charca, designers Ricardo Geldrés and Alvaro Chang-Say and artist Juan Pacheco about weaving with vegetable fibers and their possible uses with contemporary technologies.

Samuel Charca is at present researching the use of natural fibers to reinforce compound laminate materials. The common thread in the works of Ricardo Geldres, Alvaro Chang Say and Juan Pacheco is their exploration of local materials and worldviews. Alvaro’s work is based around the recycling of non-conventional materials. Other than the promotion of recycling, Ricardo aims to recover artisanal techniques or the use of low technology. Juan boasts a long trajectory in weaving. He invented the Peruvian knit in 1992, and has gone on to knit fibers, metals and LED hoses since. He describes his work as neoancestral, as it seeks to transform works found in archeology into contemporary art pieces.

The panel discussion included a three-week exhibition showcasing pieces by Ricardo, Álvaro, Juan, Ana and Rafael. 

Scenic Landscapes
The LOT Association for Theater Research (La Otra Orilla – The Other Shore) presented a panel discussion and performance titled Paisajes Escénicos (Scenic Landscapes). Led by Carlos Cueva and a group of artists from varied backgrounds, LOT explores the relationship between body, space and the arts. Since its foundation in 1988, LOT has produced theater plays and publications, as well as generating teaching spaces that follow in the legacy of the art vanguards. The panel discussion featured a review of experiences from LOT’s portfolio based on reflections about the landscape. Among them is Urban Landscapes, LOT’s first project to approach the subject of desert and water scarcity in the coast of Peru. The project sparked the research efforts that led to the exhibition Water Ecosystem.

Another feature was the participation of anthropologist and researcher Mijail Mitrovic, who presented the lecture “Subject, space and utopia.” 

A visit to Ana and Rafael’s workshop
Finally, Ana Teresa and Rafael opened the doors to their workshop in Barranco to share their artistic processes and the references that inspire their work.

“Water Ecosystem” by Ana Teresa Barboza and Rafael Freyre is the winner project of MAC Lima’s 2019 Art and Innovation Award, sponsored by UTEC – Engineering and Technology University and BBVA Foundation Peru.