The Neo Inca project gathers several themes present throughout my work, including how the notion of identity is reflected in vernacular architecture, and how it is influenced and transformed throughout history and in a fast changing contemporary environment.The project was photographed across different cities and towns in Peru and Bolivia, and focuses on the entrances and façades of buildings and houses that have been decorated with stucco elements that imitate the ancient Inca constructions, where stones were placed to fit perfectly without the use of binding materials. Some include other motifs, such as reversed pyramids and concentric rectangles. The geometries and shapes of the past are repeated, recomposed, sometimes simply painted on concrete walls, or making up fiberglass puzzles that imitate the assemblages and carvings of the ancient stone temples and palaces. This visual repertory confirms a local taste for Incan motifs, and sheds light on how their geometry has been re-appropriated, inserted, grafted and re-signified in the different local contexts. These lithic transfigurations point towards an increased fascination over the ancestral aesthetics and technological prowess of the past, and an attachment to them that could be an effort to hold on to an identity.
Neo Inca XIII, Aguascalientes, Peru, 2015. Pigment Print. 39 x 48 cm. (16 x 20 in.)