Embriones Huaco

Embriones Huaco is the first approach to a fictional history of pregnancy interruption in pre-Hispanic communities from the coast of Peru. As sketches of imaginary vestiges, the graphite drawings combine the shapes of Nasca and Mochica huacos with the aesthetic of my ceramic embryos. The cross-knit looping create links with a Nasca mantle dated 100 - 300 C.E. from the Brooklyn Museum’s collection, a textile that houses symbols of fertility. This project originated as an archeological practice of imagination. These pieces envision a community defined by rites of abortion. It also confronts the resulting omissions from which colonialism and patriarchy have constructed our history. At the same time, it questions what was “allowed” to be represented by pre-Hispanic cultures on the coast of Peru

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In the process of drawing the embryos, knitting them, caring for them, I can not help to reflect on each of the pieces as magical exercises of physical, emotional, and spiritual abortions.