Curator
Claudia Rodríguez-Ponga

Opening
Thursday 17 October 2024
7pm

 17 October 2024 – 8 February 2025

Av. Pedro de Osma 409, Barranco
Lima, Perú
Free admission

Opening hours
Wednesday – Saturday
3pm – 8pm

proyectoamil
Lima

proyectoamil is pleased to present Expedición inversa, a solo exhibition by the Trujillo artist Huanchaco, curated by Spanish curator Claudia Rodríguez-Ponga. The exhibition consists of two independent yet related projects: Proyecto Checán, which is being presented for the first time, and Psicoanálisis al Lanzón de Chavín.

Proyecto Checán revolves around the “Checán estéreo,” a device created by Huanchaco using a recording of the last person who spoke “muchik,” the language of the pre-Hispanic Mochica culture, which became extinct in the early 20th century. The 53 words that Huanchaco has recovered from this recording can be activated and combined through this artifact. The purpose of the “Checán estéreo” is to return the ruins of his mother tongue to a series of “huacos retrato,” which, when decontextualized, are found today in private collections and museums in Peru and around the world. This project also seeks to reconsider the place of these ceramics, treating them not just as archaeological fetishes but as recognizing their ancestral agency.

Psicoanálisis al Lanzón de Chavín is a piece inspired by the stone monolith located in one of the underground galleries of the Ancient Temple in the Chavín de Huantar complex. As the centerpiece of a series of fantasies, projections, and theories, academia has imposed multiple functions and meanings on it, including the burden of being “the seed” of Peruvian culture. Huanchaco created a molded copy in collaboration with the Museo Inkariy, but he produced his version using silicone and foam. Thus, the piece is a replica, though soft and limp, unable to stand upright. The Lanzón is exhausted, incapable of bearing the weight of being the cornerstone of a whole collective identity, and subjected to a psychoanalytic process that is also alienating.

One of the objectives of this exhibition is to reactivate the connections with the pre-Hispanic past that are still present in Peruvian society and are constantly used as a tool for crafting national identity discourse. Throughout the exhibition, a non-essentialist and non-idealist way of reconnecting with origins is proposed. In this sense, the expedition is reversed because it turns in on itself and observes with a certain irony, acknowledging the impossibility of such a rescue. Huanchaco proposes ways of re-linking with origins, yes: but with that origin that is not in the past, but everywhere. The artist employs strategies that are assumed to be impure, generating a playful yet critical space from which to reflect on the interactions between Western epistemology and its non-Western “objects” of study.

Fernando Gutiérrez Cassinelli (Trujillo, Peru, 1978) studied Fine Arts at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Perú, receiving the Adolfo Winternitz Award annually. He uses different media, including painting, sculpture, video, and photography. From 2006 to 2007, he was awarded a fellowship by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. His solo exhibitions include Civilización Atalaya (2021), MAC, Lima; Manual para hablar con Dios (2021), Espacio Valverde, Madrid; Ejercicios de comprobación (2018), Isabel Aninat Gallery, Chile; Manual para hablar con Dios (2016), Museo de Bogotá; Horas de lucha (2012), Numero 2 (2009), and Superchaco (2006), Lucía de la Puente Gallery, Lima. He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions at national and international levels, such as Maquinaciones (2023), MNCARS, Madrid; Ninguém teria acreditado (2021), Pinacoteca de São Paulo; La encomienda (2015), Museo de Bellas Artes de Santiago; El juego solo acaba cuando termina (2013), a traveling exhibition curated by Alfons Hug and Paz Guevara; Menos Tiempo que Lugar (2010-2011), curated by Alfons Hug; Entre Siempre y Jamás (2010), Latin American Pavilion at the Venice Biennale; Carta de Jamaica (2011), Oi Futuro Visual Arts Gallery (2011), Belo Horizonte and Museu da Maré, Rio de Janeiro; The Franks Suss Collection (2010), Saatchi Gallery, London; and Estado de las Ficciones (2010), Centro Cultural de España, Lima.

Claudia Rodríguez-Ponga Linares (Madrid, 1982) holds a PhD in Arts from the University of São Paulo with her Pequeno tratado sobre arte e magia (Small Treatise on Art and Magic). She is an associate professor at IE University, Universidad Nebrija, and SUR Escuela (UC3M), and a guest lecturer at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM). Her curatorial practice includes solo exhibitions with Eva Lootz (Alcalá 31, Madrid), Clara Carvajal (Centro Párraga, Murcia), Valeria Maculan (OTR Espacio de Arte), Sara Ramo (Alcalá 31, Madrid), and Debora Bolsoni (Athena Contemporanea, Rio de Janeiro).