Laura Hart Artista Visual: enero 2013

MUSEO LAS BOVEDAS, VALLE DE USPALLATA, MENDOZA
Inauguración y exhibición del Documental 15 de Diciembre de 2012

ARTE DE LA PREHISTORIA, DISEÑOS RUPESTRES DE CUYO
Fotografías e Imágenes Digitales y Guion expográfico: Laura Hart
contextos culturales: Horacio Chiavazza y Hugo Tucker.
Premio Fondo de la Cultura
Fundación YPF
La muestra permanecerá hasta fines de Marzo 2013. Se puede visitar todos los días de 8 a 19 hs. Entrada gratuita.
VENERACIONES
Video Documental.: Ariel Larriba / Mario Yarke / Laura Hart
Declarado de Interés Cultural, Gobierno de Mendoza

con el apoyo de la Municipalidad de Las Heras, Exagrama, Leandro Leuzzi, Dirección Provincial de Patrimonio.

MUSEO LAS BOVEDAS EXHIBITION, USPALLATA

ART OF THE PREHISTORY. ROCK ART DESIGNS FROM CUYO

Provinces of Mendoza and San Juan

Opening: December 15th, 2012

Laura Hart. Visual artist

www.laurahart.com.ar

hart_visual@yahoo.com.ar

Translation: Marcela Losavio

marce@losavio.com.ar

SPONSORED BY:

Las Heras Department City Hall

Directorate of Heritage, Government of Mendoza

Proyecto Rastros

Posada La Hojarasca

Exagrama

Ariel Larriba Films

Hipófisis, audiovisual concepts

Art: Human activity expression that interprets what is real or captures what is imaginary by means of plastic, linguistic or sound resources. Rock art: Belonging or related to rocks.

There are paintings and engravings within the Region of Cuyo. There are more than eighty sites with expressions that date back to the prehistory. The old parietal art (artwork done on walls) from this region was created mostly between 1000 and 700 BP (before present). However, small groups settlements lasted between 1500 and 3500 years and made paintings that are still preserved in two locations: Alero de las Pinturas Rojas in San Rafael (Mendoza) and Alero de los Morrillos in Barreal (San Juan).

These are the oldest paintings known to this day. Engravings from republican times, from the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century were also found. They are cattle branding marks engraved on the rocks as a way to register the livestock that was smuggled. Rock art survives, but not its meaning. We cannot read what those creators conceived as the message. However, in some regions of America, indigenous peoples and descendants have survived and kept the main pieces of their thinking and worldview, enabling us to reach their knowledge.

From the Spanish chroniclers’ writings in times of conquest up to today’s publications, we find plenty of information that helps us understand the idiosyncrasy of the pre-Hispanic peoples and, therefore, brings us closer to certain interpretations of the rock art.

Shamanism and sacred plants -medicinal and psychoactive- were a common feature for all pre-Hispanic peoples of America.[i] From the Selk’nam in Tierra del Fuego to the Taironas and Koguis in Santa Marta, Colombia, they all had a long-standing shamans’ tradition. During his altered state of consciousness or trance states, the shaman “captures” the spirit of the cat, the bird or the snake and can increase his knowledge potential, perceive deeply, talk with the spirits, predict and heal the members of the community.

According to Professor Juan Schobinger, there are signs of shamanic ritualization in the Cuyo area, such as rock holes (little mortars) found next to rock art motifs, possibly used for psychoactive plants milling, and inhaling pipes. Other signs are the plastic rock art images depicting masks, characters with cephalic attributes and cane (symbol of power), auxiliary animals: snake, cat and bird, -the typical sacred trilogy in the Andean worldview and the traditional shamans’ companions. Art sites are strategically located, from a geographic point of view, as the transition from one valley to another, the inlet of a ravine, the confluence of two streams. Also caves or shelfstones are proper environments for rituals shamanic “flights” since they are “gates” or “passages” into other worlds.

Engravings

They are more frequent in the northern regions, although they are also seen in southern Malargüe.

There are different ways to make them: Pecking the rock surface, scraping, or both procedures. Designs are usually around 10 and 70 cm long in their longest side, while in other Andean areas the designs may be much larger.

Stroke after stroke, the drawing is made up of grooves, sometimes surface grooves, others deeper. It is a hard work for the artisan: the process involves mostly his body, senses and intuition. As the strokes make up the engraving, they can be heard as a one-paced persistent drum that transmits the acoustics to the space, adding sound to the creator’s work. We know that as far as the shaman is concerned, the one-paced percussion is a way of getting into “trance” and connecting with other worlds.

Paintings

They are more numerous in areas adjacent to San Rafael, Mendoza, although they are also present in Malargüe and Barreal, San Juan. The most usual colors are reds, blacks, whites, grays and ochres. Pigments were made with a very fine grinding of colored earths, and the binding agent might have been animal fats, vegetable resins among others.

Painted designs substantially differ from engravings. Most paintings in this area have an abstract or symbolic appearance; some of them are linear or simple compositions with geometric elements, and others are complex figure-ground structures where chromaticism plays a main role.

Some designs may be the synthesis of depictions that, in the process, drop details and turn into schemes losing their original shape. Once reproduced in other space and by other hands, they suffer successive transformations, thus providing several versions of a same motif. However, certain symbols are similar in paintings as well as in engravings, and they cover wide territories with the same visual language.

Therefore, it is not proper to interpret the meaning that arises at first sight. At that time, there was no intention focused on “beauty” or “perfectibility”, they would accomplish their aim just with the bare minimum. Those peoples considered the images as “objects of powerful use”[ii], since once created, they took on the active strength of their own power. A symbology written to dominate, but that has concealed the secrets of dominance.

All our knowledge and ignorance about the rock art led to new sights from different points of view. Controversies and discussions arise, triggering new productions from different disciplines. A new contemporary conceptual construction is based on a fresh interpretation and revaluation. That new frame refers not only to the hunter-gatherers time, but it also considers the implications that the rock art currently has for our society.

Many questions arise from such old expressions, doubts; however, there are certainties as well, such as the innate need of humans to reveal themselves in different ways of expression.

[i] “There are more plants utilized as hallucinogens in the New World than in the Old one. There are around 130 species used in the western hemisphere, while there are 20 in the eastern hemisphere at the most […] the religions of the American Indians, based on the hunter shamanism, are still painstakingly looking for the mystic personal experience, and one of the easier and more logical ways to achieve it is through psychoactive plants.” SCHULTES, Richard Evans and HOFMANN, Albert. Plants of the Gods. 1982. p. 30.

[ii] “we cannot hope to understand these strange beginnings of art unless we try to enter into the mind of the primitive peoples and find out what kind of experience it is which makes them think of pictures, not as something nice to look at but as something powerful to use.” GOMBRICH, Ernst. Story of Art. 2008. p. 40.