A symbol of universal history

Martin Schönfeld, Art critic, Berlin

For some years Mónica Luza has been dedicating her paintings to the Lima-Bean theme, which in her Peruvian homeland is called <pallar>. With the motive of this image she has concentrated her style of artistic expression.

Though the pallar does not seem to be very important,  it still plays an important role in Peruvian culture today. And this for more than two thousand years. Already then, the pallar was represented in stones, ceramics and textiles.The pallares also served in daily life for divination, games and counting. These and other works by Mónica Luza are created in the style of a blackboard or table. They recall the clarity of an original language of images that did not want to be art but to directly convey precise meanings.

However, Mónica Luza goes beyond the transmission of knowledge. Her works are rather part of a broad artistic investigation. The subject of the painting focuses on its graphic characteristics and becomes a symbol of communication.These works investigate the origins of communication and question the meaning of language and its form of expression. They thematize the dimensions of the meanings of signs and symbols.

Each work stays for itself but also as part of a complex context of a plastic artistic reflection of conceptual painting. In the motif of the pallar, the artist recognizes a symbol of the development of language and writing, a symbol of myths and legends, a symbol of the infinity of expressive possibilities of culture and finally a symbol of universal history.

 

Looking for the lost sign

Alfonso Castrillón Vizcarra, Art critic, Lima

As is known, in Peru there have been several studies on the meaning of the painted pallares (Lima Beans), interesting by the way, but only hypotheses raised without any certainty, so that they remain silent signs for us. It is curious how Luza has worked these signs, extremely schematized, almost minimalist, to mean several things:

 A first meaning is the association that we (Peruvians) make with the colors of the pre-Hispanic tradition. Second, the cryptic character of the pallar (about which we know nothing) that adds an aura of mystery. Third, the allusion to an accounting method or abacus, is deduced from the way the pallares are exposed, some gathered, others occupying an individual support. But they can also be interpreted as chips of a game; the mysterious play that only Luza knows. Fourth, faced with the unsolved mystery, however, there remains the possibility of an unconditional identification with the sign, for cultural reasons, which tells us about the Peruvian and about a thousand-year-old tradition. 

Thus, Luza, with subtle allusions to the pre-Hispanic world, would be telling us about the impossibility of deciphering these signs, and therefore, the refusal to understand the culture behind them. The proposal refers to the attractiveness of the mystery, the seduction of the cryptic, the admiration for a dazzling culture, but which we do not understand. A culture that remains in the showcases of museums, enshrined in history books, but that has little to do with the present. The painted pallares will continue to be potentially significant, they keep a secret, but we do not have the key to enter the world of their significance, therefore we will always remain outside. Luza’s proposal speaks of that strangeness, that <otherness>. 

 

Querida Mónica,

Rossina Cazali, Curadora independiente, Guatemala

Si lo piensas bien es un poco difícil escribir sobre pintura si la tienes lejos. La experiencia de ver su naturaleza, trazos o texturas hace casi imposible esta tarea. Pero pensando sobre tus Pallares indudablemente la respuesta estaba dada. Sé que tus intenciones en tan enorme investigación que realizas en torno a los Pallares, se acercan más a lo antropológico o a lo arqueológico. Escarbar en los vestigios de culturas pasadas te ha alucinado desde siempre y según he visto los resultados los estás imprimiendo sobre telas e instalaciones. Pero yo, con mi derecho a construir mis propias imágenes, no pude escapar de la seducción de conectar las mismas con este medio que estamos utilizando para comunicarnos. La idea surgió al ver las imágenes de tus Pallares a través de uno de los tantos correos electrónicos que me enviaste con archivos en JPG. Fue una verdadera alucinación encontrar en la pantalla estos pallares tan rojos y negros, tan comunes y hermosamente digitalizados. O podría decir hermosamente numerados.

Según leí, los medios digitales traducen todo a números, los colores, tonos o formas. Incluso el movimiento en los videos digitalizados resulta siendo un número. Y según me cuentas, los Pallares aparecen con sus manchas, líneas y puntos sobre cerámicas y textiles. Para Larco Hoyle construyen un lenguaje, son ideogramas. Recuerdan los del I Ching y su procedimiento basado en las leyes numéricas de la probabilidad.

Pues ya ves, en la medida que todo producto cultural es descodificable es porque el ser humano se ha encargado de construir un código.  Estos “Pallares mensajeros”, tanto como los enormes dibujos de Nazca, después de miles de años probablemente intentan enviarnos mensajes. Ocultos sólo por nuestra incapacidad de leerlos o de no encontrar, aún, los códigos que los articulan.

Imagino a los brujos y brujas que leyeron los oráculos en los Pallares. Su poder se basaba en el conocimiento para descifrar estos ideogramas, lo cual se traducía en la configuración de la vida dela persona. Hoy día leer “frijoles de brujos”, como les llaman aquí en Guatemala, es una práctica limitada o una curiosidad. Pero, sin duda, un equivalente es decir abro mi e-mail, luego existo.