Walking is an art practice to which Sanaguano often resorts. His most recent project consisted of following the trail used by the ice collectors of the Chimborazo volcano with members of the community of La Moya, which is near the volcano. Extracting ice from the mines is an age-old practice in which native people climb to an altitude of 5200 meters to carve out blocks of ice using picks and shovels, carry them down wrapped in hay on donkeys and sell them for a small amount of money in the Guaranda and Chimborazo markets. The ice is used to make ice cream and fruit drinks for local festivities.

Sanaguano promoted the walk as an exercise in recreating memory and community identity. It lasted six hours and included adults, teenagers and children alike. Along the way they talked about the origins of this tradition and its relation to the community, respect for nature, and global warming; they also learned about native traditions such as how to prepare the donkeys in order to bring the blocks of ice down the mountain. On returning to their homes the traditional ice creams were made and shared with the community. The artist considers that the walk-about or path taken also restores and strengthens the profound significance that those ancestral lands have in terms of political identities for these communities. For Sanaguano the idea is not to contrast two world views –the native and the Western— but to re-view, re-create and re-invent the mestizo culture of which he is a member, taking advantage of the richness of the two perspectives through an equal dialogue. For Sanaguano the walk-about or path taken also restores and strengthens the profound significance that those ancestral lands have in terms of political identities for these communities.

AmaruCholango is another artist with direct bonds to the Andean world; in his case contemporary art is a means of transmitting the Kichwacosmovision. Although his practice does not reference popular education or liberation theology, it is pertinent in that it promotes the spiritual principles of the indigenous world by reinstating its ethical, political and epistemological potential through contemporary languages and strategies. His work focuses on reworking and redefining the meaning of the ancestral forms of knowledge that surrounded him as a child in his family and community, particularly his familiarity with native healing practices.

Cholango’s artwork does not treat the Andean world as a subject but instead seeks to reveal its religious and spiritual principles, while overcoming the subject/object dichotomy through which the West has structured humanity’s relationship with nature and that of the spectator to art. Cholango aims to provide a holistic, inter-subjective understanding of our place in the universe. As we have pointed out together with the art theorist Christian León, this new meaning of art is set forth in Cholango’s relational works where he “builds on a relational Andean aesthetic that, making use of an intercultural pedagogical approach, fosters an experience of spiritual purification and encourages a new relationship between humans and nature”.(9)

Papa Chaucha (2009) (10) invites the spectator to look upon the growth cycle of the potato from the standpoint of the Andean cosmovision, while also criticizing the West’s instrumentalization and destruction of nature. The artist planted potatoes on a field near Trier (Germany) invocating Andean rituals. During the autumnal equinox, when the potatoes ripen he transported them in boxes to the gallery. He invited the public to gather the tubular while he introduced the Andean cosmological conceptions concerning life and death, the sun (Inty) and the land (Pachamama). The potatoes were prepared and shared emphasizing reciprocity and gratitude with nature as fundamental principles of indigenous practices.

In the ritual ¿A dónde vas? (2011) (11) he uses fire as a healing element to prompt a critical inquiry on western thought.

Cholango’s practices recover the political and spiritual dimension of native culture.

In the work of those two artists and that of many others engaging in critical practices from the fringes of the global art system, the liberation aesthetic is manifested in the affirmation of the political dimension of art in issues dealing with Westernism, universalism, Eurocentrism, ethnocentrism, development-ism and colonialism, which account for cultural, economic, political and social injustices, inequalities and exclusion. Liberation aesthetic encompasses and is complemented by various practices, methodologies and aesthetic and pedagogical resources that resort to the symbolic, subjective, creative, sensitive and affective planes to engage in awareness-raising and liberation from a multitude of interrelated oppressions involving class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, etc. This political and epistemological dialogue between aesthetics and pedagogy also fosters the recognition and strengthening of the sundry forms of otherness, subjectivities and knowledge stigmatized by the colonial system, while also bolstering values that capitalism and development-ism tend to dismiss, such as a sense of community, solidarity, equity, reciprocity and spirituality. Moreover, questioning the predominantly colonial and Eurocentric nature of aesthetics liberates art from the hands of specialists and allows it to rise “from below”, through methodologies that encourage aesthetic experimentation, participation, dialogue, and collective action on the part of traditionally oppressed communities. Liberation aesthetic thus provides an alternative to the coloniality of aesthetics that tends to perpetrate a system of art and values stemming from the imposition of an exclusive, elitist cultural, political, economic and social cultural model. This liberatory aesthetic, along with liberation pedagogy and theology, seek to denaturalize inherited beliefs and imaginaries that promote conformity, passivity or impotence towards the feelings of dependence and inferiority embodied in their subjects. Such an aesthetic would fulfill its emancipatory role by recognizing and questioning coloniality and its many facets, which are also present in the art system; it would thus also make an outstanding contribution to the current crop of emancipatory practices that work outside of and question the control of all forms of subjectivity promoted by centers of power.

NOTES

* Paper delivered at The College Art Association (CAA) 100th Annual Conference, Los Angeles, EEUU, (Re)Writing the Local in Latin American Art Session, 25 February 2011.
(1) Estermann, Josef, “Colonialidad, descolonización e interculturalidad. Apuntes desde la Filosofía Intercultural”, Interculturalidad Crítica y Descolonización. Fundamentos para el debate, Instituto Internacional de Integración del Convenio Andrés Bello, La Paz, 2009, p. 55.
(2) Lander, Edgardo, La colonialidad del saber: eurocentrismo y ciencias sociales. Perspectivas latinoamericanas. “Ciencias sociales: saberes coloniales y eurocéntricos”, Buenos Aires: Clasco, 2000, p. 12.
(3) For an analysis of the dichotomies addressed by Freire, see: Fernández Fernández, José Antonio, El legado pedagógico del siglo XX para la escuela del si