Lima, Peru - Contemporary Art

While in Lima, I spent an afternoon at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Lima (MAC Lima). In this contemporary art museum all the artists were indigenous. In the US, native artists are presented in exhibits made for native artists and the fact they are native is pointed out as a key aspect of their art. Here, the museum was saying these are Peru’s contemporary artists and this is the art they create, they are Indigenous and that’s part of their story and guides their art, but we show them because they are our contemporary artists. Why does it matter if they from Native or Western ancestry? Because it was the first time I’ve been to a museum and seen aesthetics developed form non-Western art concepts. The three rooms of the museum, in which I spent a total of four hours, drew on patterns, materials, concepts, and cosmology other than Western, Christian. Aesthetics developed from Andean, Amazonian, and Incan, worldviews, with nature and community at the center. This was (one) reason why I came here, to South America, to see this kind of art presented in this manner.