The Tablas de Sarhua: Indigenous Aesthetics in the Context of Contemporary Peruvian Art

Abstract

Examina las Tablas de Sarhua, pinturas hechas por los pobladores de la comunidad campesina andina de Sarhua (Ayacucho, Perú). Las Tablas han pasado de ser objetos hechos para conmemorar los vínculos sociales en un pueblo rural a pinturas destinadas al público urbano y más recientemente han sido adoptadas por el circuito del arte contemporáneo. Desde una perspectiva descolonial, la tesis demuestra la agencia de los pintores sarhuinos quienes, tanto en Sarhua como en Lima, han adaptado constantemente sus antiguas prácticas y se han apropiado de estéticas occidentales modernas para responder en diferentes contextos a los discursos hegemónicos. Asimismo, cuestiona nociones preestablecidas sobre las artes andinas, rurales e indígenas, que las conciben como repetitivas e inmunes al cambio, y analiza las Tablas como componentes intrínsecos de la modernidad y la contemporaneidad. La tesis analiza primero los orígenes de las Tablas en el tránsito de la época colonial a la republicana y el uso de las tablas en relación con prácticas y espacios sociales sarhuinos hasta la actualidad. Luego estudia los cambios que se produjeron en la década de 1970 cuando los artistas sarhuinos en Lima transformaron su antigua estética y se apropiaron de elementos visuales del entorno urbano, así como la circulación de la Tablas a través de diferentes regímenes de valor (arte popular, artesanía, arte contemporáneo). Finalmente, estudia el papel de los talleres y las agencias individuales de los pintores sarhuinos en el devenir contemporáneo de las Tablas de Sarhua, así como el creciente rol de las artistas sarhuinas, quienes desde una perspectiva de género, vienen remodelando el arte contemporáneo peruano.

In this dissertation I examine the Tablas de Sarhua, paintings on board made by the people of the Andean peasant community of Sarhua, through an art history lens informed by the discourse on indigeneity and decoloniality. Since at least the nineteenth century, Sarhuinos make paintings on planks of wood on the occasion of the construction of a new house to record the family members who contributed to its construction. The paintings depict not only the people involved, but also a Catholic saint, the image of the sun, and a text in Spanish. The main purpose of these objects is to represent and therefore maintain systems of reciprocity and social cohesion within the community. Beginning in the 1970s, Sarhuino migrants living in Lima created a new kind of Tabla intended for the urban audience. The new Tablas, painted on rectangular wooden panels, initially depicted costumbrista scenes of rural Sarhua and later came to also address themes of social injustice and migrant life in Lima. Their enthralling story speaks to how objects made to commemorate social links within a rural town were transformed initially into paintings intended for the urban public and now have become embraced by the contemporary art world. The Tablas de Sarhua have followed a path similar to other forms of Indigenous art worldwide. However, like other Andean art objects linked to rural circuits, the Tablas and their rich history have received attention from the global art system only in ways still tainted by antiquated definitions of modernity and flawed the categories of craft, folk and tourist art. In this dissertation I analyze the Tablas de Sarhua within a new theoretical framework, one that brings the discipline of art history to bear on this material, and that positions the Tablas within the broader discourse on Indigenous art. I reconsider the aesthetic production of non-Western societies as responses and intrinsic components of modernity and contemporaneity. In order to study the paintings of Sarhua within their own systemic development, one of the main objectives of this dissertation is to unpack the way these paintings respond to colonial dynamics, both in Sarhua and in Lima, and to demonstrate the Sarhuino painters' complex and active negotiation of power through the adaptation of their old practices and the appropriation and re-elaboration of modern Western aesthetics and knowledge to respond to and challenge colonial hegemony. In this dissertation I focus on five main topics spanning the changing contexts of the Tablas. I contend that reassessing their history, leads to a better appreciation of their contemporary manifestation. First, I tie the origins of the Tablas to the nineteenth century transit from colonial to Republican times, a period when other forms of peasant arts developed in the Andes. Then, I track the specific ways in which the Tablas coalesced through the complex relationship between objects, images, Sarhuino practices, and social spaces. Third, I demonstrate how Sarhuino artists in the capital city of Lima reshaped their old aesthetics and appropriated visual elements of the urban environment to negotiate with systems of political and social power. I contend that Sarhuinos created a style legible to urban audiences to communicate their own concerns, while at the same time they found in the Tablas a way to reinforce their group identity. Fourth, I analyze how Tablas are linked to other visual arts created in Lima in the 1970s and how they circulated through different regimes of value, being considered as folk-art, tourist art, and art pieces. I deconstruct the static categories attached to Tablas and demonstrate the shifting and contested discourses and values constructed about them. Finally, I look at the role of workshops in the development of the new paintings of Sarhua and at the individual agencies and diverse goals of the contemporary Sarhuino painters. I also examine the increasing role play by Sarhuino women artists and how some of them are responding to the hegemonic discourse, not only in terms of class and race, but also of gender, challenging the patriarchal social order from their particular situation and from there contributing to re-shape Peruvian contemporary art.