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In discussing the work of Kukuli Velarde it is important to take into consideration two occurences: that of Spain's conquest of the New World and Velarde's own confrontation with the new world of North America after leaving her birthplace of Cuzco, Peru for Mexico and continuing in her current seven year residence in New York City.
Velarde was horn in the ancient city of Cuzco, (in Quechua, Cosco, meaning "center" or "navel")1 Peru in 1962, and though she lived in Lima, she was raised by Cuzqueña parents who maintained their Cuzqueñan culture. Cuzco is a city in which the imprints of western colonization are still physically as well as psychically preserved. After their conquest of Cuzco in 1534, the Spaniards built upon Incan forms to develop the infrastructure of their colonial city. The stones from the old Inca walls served as the foundations of Christian edifices - forming the basis not only of an architectural, but urban, religious and cultural mestizaje.
In the colonizers attempts to dominate and form a culture in their own image, a hybrid culture was created, syncretizing elements of the indigenous with the West and the past with the present. The seventeenth and eighteenth century "Cuzco School" in which the local mestizo artists copied and later interpreted into their own unique vocabulary, the works of European masters, gave form to a particularly American aesthetic. At the same time, the native traditions - the Andean religion, music and folk art Andean heritage all persisted in light of these transformations. "The new world never became an exact copy of Spain. It was and [still] is an American society."2 It is this double edged sword of cultural fusion and cultural resistance which would comprise the breeding ground for Velarde's social and artistic development.
Like the indigenous artists of Peru, who are her artistic role models, Kukuli Velarde is basically self-taught. During her twenty-two year stay in her native country, Velarde enjoyed a successful and relatively celebrated career as a painter. Despite her achievements, which included solo exhibitions from the young age of ten, Velarde felt little visceral connection with her artistic output. She journeyed to Colombia to study and perhaps actively seek out that intimate link with her creative production, but departed after half...