Hidden material traces of sacred Andean spaces within the Viceroyalty of Peru.

GABRIELA SIRACUSANO

Zurich

Conferencia; Research seminar series; 2022

Univresidad de Zurich

The main hypothesis that guided this research is summarized as follows: The body of the artistic-religious goods made during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries in the territories of the viceroyalties of Peru and Río de la Plata and that today are presented modified in their structure or polychromy, fragmented, decomposed, transformed into new forms and iconographies, hidden, or that have suffered transfers that would be altering their significance, would be preserving relevant evidence for the knowledge of cultural practices linked to their uses and functions. As a secondary thesis I raised the following: The character of fragment, ruin or concealment of these goods – which would have blocked their possibility of being investigated and included in the historiographical discourses of colonial art – would be, paradoxically, the key to their unraveling and would shed light on the processes of artistic production of the period.