It is the most important exhibition in France in 2022. ‘Machu Picchu and the Treasures of Peru’ is presented at the City of Architecture and Heritage in the French capital. A total of 190 pieces of exceptional manufacture allow the visitor to have an extraordinary vision of what was the most important civilization in the Southern Cone of Latin America. The traveling exhibition also offers a third-dimensional view of the Citadel, a flyover from the sky.
Ulla Holmquist Pachas, archaeologist, former Minister of Culture of Peru and curator of the exhibition received Escala in Paris at the venue where the exceptional exhibition is presented.
EEP – How was this idea born, how long did it take to materialize it?
The idea for the exhibition arose several years ago with one goal in mind: to hold a major exhibition where Andean civilization could be presented to a large audience. It was an exhibition that will travel to various cities around the world, considering a large collection from the Larco Museum, along with some pieces from Machu Picchu, where it will be possible to understand why the Incas and Machu Picchu end up being such an important symbol, not only for Peru, but for the civilizations of the Southern Hemisphere.
EEP – Is it a traveling Peruvian passport?
The idea is to reach a wider audience. Through a novel exhibition, of important pre-Columbian collections from various cultures originating in ancient Peru, with audiovisual immersion elements that have been very well conceived, of augmented reality, the visitor has a perspective that they will never be able to have even going to Machu Picchu: fly over it
All this, we hope, will serve to reach an audience that wants to have the general experience of getting closer to Andean society, seeing great treasures, emblematic pieces that are exquisitely made, very sophisticated. In addition, we want the public to be able to have fun and understand why there is a narrative, a story that we tell to place the pre-Columbian Peruvian society in the place it should be, on a par with the great civilizations of the world.
EEP – We are talking about a great exhibition in which they present 190 pieces of beauty with exceptional characteristics. Many leave Peru for the first time.
Indeed, there is a combination of masterpieces from the Larco Museum’s collection, which represent the various cultures. They are not only metal objects, avocado, gold, which are very representative of our pre-Columbian cultures. It is an exhibition where one can realize the great mastery in the work of the materials of our ancestors, of the artists of our ancient societies.
EEP – Who visits the exhibition, will find some of the wonderful pieces of Machu Picchu that for almost a century were in the possession of Yale University, USA, finally returned to Peru in 2011?
They are not exactly pieces from the Concha Museum, which is where these artifacts are now in Peru, but there are objects from Machu Picchu. In other words, we are talking about the same type of objects that can be found in the Citadel, which allow us to see that various activities of food consumption, toasts, rituals were carried out… All this gives us an idea of how was that civilization and why was it the synthesis of a millennial development.
EEP – The Incas were the most important civilization in South America. One of its peculiarities is the form of its writing, the Khypu…
That is a good question. From a very young age, many of us South Americans and Peruvians have grown up saying: “there was no writing here.” Actually, that is a way of understanding writing from a Eurocentric vision in which other types of information records are discarded or not considered.
In our societies, a type of three-dimensional information recording was carried out, in the case of ceramics for example, and in the case of the Khypus. A system of knotted ropes, the different knots in the different positions of the ropes, which were also twisted with different colored threads, store qualitatively different information, as if they were computer files, and information can be digitally recorded numerically.
That is, the presence or absence of the knot in a respective position – above, in the middle, or below the main rope – was recording information. It is not an abacus or a counting system, it is a digital information recording system.
And although the complete decipherment of the khypus has not been achieved up to now, the progress of the research of many professionals indicates that we are facing a very advanced information system and that we could comparatively consider it as a ‘data base’, a of data’.
EEP – They are also distinguished by the way they treat their dead. Unlike the Egyptians, they did not mummify their lords. They used the air and the cold that occurs there in the depths of the Andes, at more than 3,500 meters high…
Yes, we are talking about mummies because to a certain extent there is a kind of natural mummification. On the coast, for example, in very arid spaces, bodies have been found that seem to have been preserved by removing the internal part, and this is not the case.
They have been preserved by the aridity of the soil, by the depth of the burials, which were carefully cared for by their communities, because the dead were dead not only by the concept that we have today in modernity; they were ancestors who still had importance for their communities, who were revisited, dressed, offerings were brought to them, they were fed because they were the ones responsible for regenerating life in this world.
The world below is conceived as a world of regeneration, and also in the heights, bringing some practices with the human offerings, which there were, to these mountain peaks from where that liquid came down has been vital in the Andean worldview in general. .
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