Bienal Internacional De Arte, SIART

︎Recyled Plastics
︎2013

In 2013 I was asked to curate and participate in the Bolivian Bienal known as Siart with a group of artists representing Puno. Puno is a geographical and cosmically unstable ground. Global Political powers often dictate South America as the third world; under this scheme Puno would be fitting the title of fourth world. Neighboring Bolivia and not quite Peru; Puno has a long arduous story.  

Our ancestors envisioned utopia, a union with our environment, our traditional culture re-takes its rightful place in humanity through the merits of modern Multi-Disciplinary creative work; through open engagement of our public, we bring Puno out of the past and toward a contemporary global present through interpreting our Multidisciplinary Indigenous past.

Lately Peru likes to hate us for long, tense standoffs as we confront modern exploitive orders from the pseudo-colonial government in Lima. These antecedents are a continual politic of self-created social reforms that have cross-influenced colonial Peru and Bolivia since inception.

These issues drive us forward through creativity, which at times is divinely inspired by the great and conflictive space we inhabit. Some questions we would like to address; What does Puno represent on the national and international psyche? How does Bolivia perceive Puno? What are some of the ways in which local and international artists re-make the millennial traditions that still exist in Puno and with what materials? How do we critique homogenizing globalization and our tenuous participation with it? What of the inherent consumerism involved in the packaging and selling of our traditions and what is authenticity?

Puno’s Artists

Puno’s pre and post-colonial rebellions and cultural revolutions are too many to count; Puno’s creative strength has always been guided toward creating a space of interaction and equality with the west while maintaining and strengthening our local cultures. In the early 1900’s, collectives such as ‘Orkopatja’ created visual and literary works that influenced far outside the geographical confines of Puno. Even in spite of recent globalization trends, Puno currently houses many relatively unknown artists, testimony to the creative divinity of our unstable soil, a soil cultivated in the struggle to live in adversity. Colonial society is only beginning to again recognize the artist’s importance in re-creating a civil society built on the shaky foundations of colonialism; the kind of society envisioned follows Art, instead of Art following society. The artists invited to participate in the project are a mix of local and international artists who share what Puno means to them.

︎Arturo Toledo Gonza
︎Aymar Ccopacatty
︎Max Castillo
︎Cecilia Vicuña
︎Juan Cuno Balcon
︎Kathy Bruce

︎Alastair Noxsle
︎Pancho Basurco
︎Cesar Cornejo
︎Donna Huanca
︎Nilton Gonzalo Vela Dámaso