A Dozen Dozen Chullos
2012–2013
Hand-painted photocopy on accounting paper
Series of 144, each a unique piece
42 × 30 cm
16.54 × 11.81 in
Walls of Progress: For Economic Development
2011
Mud, straw, plaster, acrylic, wood
19 × 79 × 4 cm
7.48 × 31.1 × 1.57 in
Walls of Progress: For Works in the Countryside
2012
Mud, straw, plaster, acrylic, wood
20 × 68 × 8 cm
7.87 × 26.77 × 3.15 in
In her practice, Ximena Garrido-Lecca examines Peru’s turbulent history and explores the cultural impact of neocolonial values as they are transmitted through globalization. She studies urban, rural, and natural architectures, focusing on spaces where materiality mediates between the particular and the universal. Beginning with modes of making, organizing, and communicating found in contemporary Peruvian culture, she employs strategies of appropriation, modification, and assemblage to question our relationship with processes of transformation—particularly in relation to landscape.
In A Dozen Dozen Chullos, Garrido-Lecca explores the relationship between labor and its economic value, as well as the commodification of cultural heritage and exoticism in the context of globalization. Two works from the Walls of Progress series attempt to replicate and preserve political slogans commonly painted on adobe walls across the country. Due to the ever-changing nature of politics and the organic fragility of these surfaces, these messages often fade or disappear—either under new coats of paint or through natural decay. Garrido-Lecca’s models remain as witnesses and records of these contemporary expressions that, over time, become part of historical memory.
