Photo/ Foto: Marlène Ramírez Cancio

Hecho en el Perú: Vitrinas para un Museo de la Memoria

"Hecho en el Perú", the work with which Yuyachkani commemorates their thirtieth anniversary, is born of the suggestions that the group proposed two art forms: plastic installation and dramatic action. Both one and the other involve the viewer and the experience of a shared space. That territory to see and to be seen, for discovery and inquiry, is a place that announces, in a playful and thought-provoking way, the two connotations of the word "gallery": the enclosure intended for the exhibition of art and also the tour site in which there are, on one side, stalls offering goods. Walking through a lesson, walking through a market: in both cases we follow a path that is not fixed in advance, stopping or hastening after the counsel of our own interest or desire. What connects the display cases in which actors and actresses illustrate the visions and scenes of contemporary Peruvian is not a script, but the trace of footsteps and stops of every visitor; there are, at all times, six simultaneous people at once. As in reality, something always happens outside the field of our gaze. The viewer does not fully absorb -as those who appreciate a landscape - an object of fixed contours and full consistency; rather, they find themselves -as one finds walking through a busy street- drifting through a myriad of gestures and presences. For certain, the passerby driving on a street knows that five minutes before or after he will not see the same thing because the of nature of urban traffic. Such is the experience of those who enter "Made in Peru".

Biography

Since 1971, Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani has been working at the forefront of theatrical experimentation, political performance, and collective creation. "Yuyachkani" is a Quechua word that means "I am thinking, I am remembering." Under this name, the theater group has devoted itself to the collective exploration of embodied social memory, particularly in relation to questions of ethnicity, violence, and memory in Peru. Founded through the initiative of Miguel Rubio, Teresa Ralli and others, the group is recognized throughout the world as one of the most premier exponents of Latin American theater. For the past 38 years, they have created performances intimately aligned with Peruvian society, involving the spectator in an act that is at once reflective and emotional. Yuyachkani creates a theater for all that reveals Peru's great diversity, drawing on rituals, the sacred, and Andean space to provoke an introspective investigation into the past that can help us understand the present.