Gabriela Germana Roquez – The Changing Contexts of Tablas de Sarhua: Rethinking Indigenous and Rural Aesthetics through Transcultural Interactions

My research addresses the circulation of modern and contemporary rural and indigenous objects across different cultural and conceptual contexts. Likewise, rather than studying these objects in isolation, as if no external influence had defined their meanings and forms, as many previous studies suggest, I seek to analyze them as part of local and transregional circuits. This project focuses on Tablas de Sarhua, paintings on boards made by members of the rural community of Sarhua (Ayacucho, Peru), at least since the 19th century. I propose that the Tablas originated in the late colonial era and early republican times when Sarhua was still part of regional and transregional colonial artistic circuits. This perspective allows me to link the iconography of the old Tablas with European engravings and paintings with peasant and religious scenes, and with images that referred to the Latin American independence movements. I also analyze how Sarhuinos used the Tablas, throughout the 20th century, as part of a ritual to commemorate the construction of new houses. Through the study of their materiality and their interaction with different human and non-human elements of the community, I determine the way in which these objects refer to the specific natural and cultural context in which they have been used and produced for decades. Sarhuino immigrants in the city of Lima created a new version of the paintings in the 1970s and, as the environment in which the Tablas were produced changed, their materiality, style and content underwent a major transformation. I demonstrate how the new style of the Tablas is linked to the painters’ exposure to illustrations in books and other school materials and thus how this production is linked to the modern styles of printing and illustration that circulated worldwide.

Gabriela Germana Roquez is an independent Peruvian scholar. She received her bachelor’s degree in art history from Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Peru, and her doctoral degree In History and Criticism of Art from Florida State University. She specializes in modern and contemporary Andean art with emphasis on Indigenous and rural aesthetics and their critical relationship with the global art context. Her research interests cover decolonial theories, visual sovereignty, feminist theories and gender studies, critical studies of race and ethnicity, and theories of circulation and regimes of value. From 2019-2021, she was Visiting Assistant Professor in Contemporary Art History at the University of South Florida. She has published in the journals Arts, Athanor, The Journal of Curatorial Studies, Illapa Mana Tukukuq, Artesanías de América, Anales del Museo de América, and in edited volumes and exhibition catalogs. Germana has also worked as researcher and curator in different museums in Lima and has developed several independent curatorial projects in Peru and the United States. Currently, she is a member of the Museo de Arte de Lima’s Academic Committee, and a research member of the project “Linking the sacred: spiritual currents in Latin American and Caribbean art of the 20th century, 1920-1970” of the Cisneros Institute of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She is also lecturer at the M.A. program in Museology and Cultural Management at Ricardo Palma University and is co-editing, with Lesley Wolff, the special issue of Arts “Rethinking Contemporary Latin American art.”