VIOLETA QUISPE

Quispe’s work stems from the Tablas de Sarhua, painted wooden boards that narrate, through scenes and inscriptions, the life, rituals and memory of the Quechua community of Sarhua, in Ayacucho. For a long time, this painting was a male practice. The artist’s mother belongs to the first generation of women who began painting them, and Violeta sees herself as part of the second. “What we do does not begin with us: it gathers the work of our fathers, our mothers and those who came before us,” she says.

In Quechua, imaymanam refers to what is of every kind, diverse. Drawing on the three Andean worlds — Hanan Pacha, Kay Pacha and Uku Pacha — the artist imagines a territory for what is changing, ambiguous or hard to classify. “Hanan Pacha, Kay Pacha and Uku Pacha are worlds I received. Imaymanam Pacha is the world I imagine.” In the works, bodies, mountains, animals and deities break free from rigid identities, addressing gender, sexuality, matriarchal lineage and the myths passed down by the community. In Sacrifiota pagay – Paying Sacrifices (2026), women and men appear in birthing positions, and ropes evoke Andean vertical birth: the work questions the idea that care and family sacrifice naturally belong to one gender.

The research extends to the very matter of the works. Quispe works mainly with natural earth pigments from Sarhua and incorporates coca leaves, Andean medicinal plants, sand from the Peruvian coast and her own blood, as well as gold leaf, a reference to colonial painting. In this exhibition, the artist cuts, assembles and expands the wood, and some pieces take on volume. “I am not trying to change technique to move away from the board, but to discover how far the language I inherited can expand.”

The exhibition consolidates the artist’s relationship with France. In 2025, she was in residence at the Cité internationale des arts through the Institut français x Cité internationale des arts program, where she presented the performance Takiy, Kukuy, Kuyariy in the exhibition D’ici 60 ans : relayer. That same year, she exhibited in Paris alongside Ivana de Vivanco in Cuentos para no dormir. Her works recently entered the collections of Les Abattoirs, Musée – Frac Occitanie Toulouse, and Frac Grand Large — Hauts-de-France, in Dunkirk. “Getting to know other worlds does not mean abandoning one’s own, but discovering that culture can travel, transform and return with new questions.”

This project is carried out with the support of the Embassy of Peru in France and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Peru.