Sandra Gamarra Heshiki
Vitrina III (Autóctono / Nativo / Primitivo / Aborigen), 2018
Artist
Sandra Gamarra Heshiki
Title
Vitrina III (Autóctono / Nativo / Primitivo / Aborigen)
Year of creation
2018
Technology and dimensions
Total dimensions: 127 x 40 x 180 cm, 7 drawings on acrylic, different dimensions
Year of acquisition
2021
Acquisition of the foundation
In her painting, Sandra Gamarra Heshiki deals with the visual traditions and museum conventions of the Global North and shows how their dominance since the times of colonialism has been accompanied by the devaluation and erasure of the indigenous cultures of the Global South. She copies and appropriates historical works of art to highlight their role in the construction of memory and cultural identity.
In 2018, the artist presented two fictitious museum rooms in her exhibition Indian Red in Madrid: in one room a series of paintings could be seen that cite classic genres of the European painting tradition such as portrait, still life and landscape painting; in the other room there were ten showcases with small paintings , which show anthropomorphic ceramics from indigenous populations of the Andean region. The showcases in the series The Museum of Ostracism , in which the ceramics from the Inca and pre-Inca periods appear to float in the air, are based on the presentation formats of ethnological museums. The artifacts, neatly lined up and presented behind glass, cite objects from various Spanish museums, whose collections they found in the form of donations but also as looted items. If you walk around the display cases, you notice that the supposed objects are two-dimensional paintings on acrylic glass. The back of each picture is labeled with words that are used to derogatorily describe the indigenous peoples of South America. The objects of pre-Columbian culture are not only presented here in isolation and detached from their original functions, they also become carriers of a genealogy of prejudices that extends from the Spanish colonial period to the present.
- gk
