| Once upon a time, a Mochica princess ruled the northern coast of Perú. Her vast kingdom began where Ecuador is now located and reached down as far as Lima, the current capital of the Peruvian territory. Heir to the mythical god Aia Paec, our copper-skinned lady strutted around the hot sands of the Moche Valley in Trujillo (500 km. north of Lima), enjoying elaborate and bloody celebrations in the stunning Huacas del Sol y de la Luna or massive temples devoted to the adoration of the sun and the moon. She was always pampered by the skillful craftsmen who showered her with exquisite gifts in ceramic, gold and textiles. |  |
“Once upon a time: A Mochica princess” – Curator Jano Cortijo
Once upon a time, a Mochica princess ruled the northern coast of Perú. Her vast kingdom began where Ecuador is now located and reached down as far as Lima, the current capital of the Peruvian territory. Heir to the mythical god Aia Paec, our copper-skinned lady strutted around the hot sands of the Moche Valley in Trujillo (500 km. north of Lima), enjoying elaborate and bloody celebrations in the stunning Huacas del Sol y de la Luna or massive temples devoted to the adoration of the sun and the moon. She was always pampered by the skillful craftsmen who showered her with exquisite gifts in ceramic, gold and textiles. Particularly precise and detailed were the huacorretratos (ceramic portraits) made in her honor; accurate depictions of her autochthonous features in clay vessels. In spite of all the comfort and riches provided by her surroundings, our princess never felt really comfortable with her rural landscape or among her rudimentary people.
From an early age, she preferred to lose herself into the dreamy tales provided by her bootleg copies of Hans Christian Andersen and the Grimm brothers. Reading those tales, she envisioned herself as part of a fancy happy ending story where a handsome, Caucasian prince charming would spirit her away to a land of green prairies and castles.
But, until then, she demanded exotic pets for her daily amusement, surrogate comfort providers for the prince she had yet to meet. Her estrangement went as far as refusing the scanty cotton loincloths favored by her countrywomen and going, instead, for elaborate guises in silk and taffeta to conceal her, once proud, maroon physiognomy.
In doing so, our leading lady kicked off a Sisyphean reinvention process that turned her into Goldilocks first, then Snow White, next Cinderella and, later, any Disney princess that best suited her transmogrification needs. Decidedly, but unwillingly, she became the poster child for the massive denial that has forever affected millions of people, making them renounce, escape or modify their own beings in order to erase any peculiar feature that might give away their origins and background. Her story would have remained unknown were it not for the meticulously concocted paintings and drawings of Jorge Gonzales San Miguel.
The disturbing and ironic images in “Once upon a time…” are the result of a lengthy process of investigation and experimentation within the realms of contemporary figurative painting. The rigorous pictorial technique of Gonzales San Miguel, paired with his insightful study of pre-Inca iconographies, have produced a seemingly simple yet perplexing marriage of first and third world imageries, two worlds that have pretty much forever been creeping around each other, always carefully avoiding. The obviously indigenous features in these Disney-clad characters are as unsettling as the sight of Lil’ Kim in a blond wig, but we should question our surprise since, lately, we have been living in a land where “the reinvention of self is just one more of our inalienable rights.”
The strong graphic cocktail devised by this Peruvian artist is both a bizarre fusion of the mainstream and the exotic and a double homage to the mastery of Mochica art and to the crowd-pleasing and world-acclaimed talent of Mr. Walt D. Gonzales San Miguel who has wittingly managed sardonically to question everyone’s idiosyncrasy; one of the strongest features of this exhibition is how it manages to makes us all laugh—at and of ourselves.
