Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, New Art

July 13–Sept 30, 2018

Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, New Art investigates contemporary art practices that preserve and foreground Indigenous American notions of the built environment and natural world. The three words in the exhibition’s title are Quechua, the Indigenous language most spoken in the Americas. Each holds more than one meaning: pacha denotes universe, time, space, nature, or world; llaqta signifies place, country, community, or town; and wasichay means to build or to construct a house. Influenced by the richness of these concepts, the artworks explore the conceptual frameworks inherited from, and also still alive in, Indigenous groups in Mexico and South America that include the Quechua, Aymara, Maya, Aztec, and Taíno, among others. 

The show features the work of seven emerging Latinx artists based in the United States and Puerto Rico: william cordova, Livia Corona Benjamin, Jorge González, Guadalupe Maravilla, Claudia Peña Salinas, Ronny Quevedo, and Clarissa Tossin. Their works investigate the complex relationship that indigenous and vernacular notions of construction, land, space, and cosmology have had in the history of modern and contemporary art and architecture in the Americas.

This exhibition is organized by Marcela Guerrero, assistant curator, with Alana Hernandez, curatorial project assistant.

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Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, New Art is part of the Whitney’s emerging artists program, sponsored by

Significant support for this exhibition is also provided by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and by the Whitney’s National Committee.

Additional support is provided by AMEXCID with the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York, the Garcia Family Foundation, and an anonymous donor.

Curatorial research and travel were funded by the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation.

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Livia Corona Benjamin

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Livia Corona Benjamin’s works stem from her long-term, ongoing project exploring the conical grain silos in rural Mexico known as graneros del pueblo that were built under the now defunct government program CONASUPO (Compañía Nacional de Subsistencias Populares). In 1962, CONASUPO commissioned Mexican architect Pedro Ramírez Vázquez to design an architectural template that farmers could build themselves using the construction materials they had at hand. The conical shape of the silos is reminiscent of pre-Hispanic pyramids but the adaptation of the blueprint by local farmers make the more than 4,000 grain barns an example of vernacular architecture in Mexico. The CONASUPO grain project was a failed government program that left behind thousands of these structures in disuse. 

Working entirely in analog film from a single black-and-white negative, Livia Corona Benjamín made her photograms titled Infinite Rewrite through multiple exposures in the darkroom. Each exposure fractured the image further, generating ranges of color not present in the original negative and resulting in pixel-like shapes that are analog yet give the appearance of having been digitally manipulated. The pixels reference stone and shell mosaics in pre-Hispanic art. The repetition of the abstract forms nods to the many versions of Mexican grain silos made from one master design during the CONASUPO initiative, and also comments on the role of photography in the era of digital automation.

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Livia Corona Benjamin, Mazatlpilli, 2018

Black and white photograph of a grain silo.

Livia Corona Benjamin (b. 1975), Mazatlpilli, 2018. Pigment inkjet print with turquoise, jade, coral, onyx, obsidian, tiger’s eye, and animal bone, 40 × 30 in. Collection of the artist. Image courtesy the artist

Black and white photograph of a grain silo.

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A woman in a leopard suit scaling a wall

Clarissa Tossin, still from Ch'u Mayaa, 2017. Video, color, sound, 17:56 min. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Film and Video Committee 2019.320. © Clarissa Tossin

A woman in a leopard suit scaling a wall

“The cultures that these artists are looking towards are not pre-Columbian, in the strict sense of the word, in terms that they're not frozen in time. They're not dead cultures, they're still very much alive.”
—Marcela Guerrero, assistant curator

Hear from the exhibition’s artists and curator about selected works from the exhibition.

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In the News

“As indicated by its Quechuan title, to describe the world and its structures in both nuanced yet manifold ways is, in turn, the central premise of this exhibition.”
—Cultbytes