Good Government, 2021
Sala Alcalá 31.
Madrid, España
The exhibition Buen Gobierno (Good Government) by Peruvian artist Sandra Gamarra Heshiki is a visual exercise based on a critical approach to colonialism, which questions the established orders in the imaginaries of both Spanish and Peruvian societies with respect to the historical moment at which their two histories converged. The exhibition addresses the neo-colonialism that still prevails in Spain’s relationship with many Latin American cultures, focusing on the Andean context.
Buen Gobierno takes its title from Primera Nueva Cr6nica y Buen Gobierno (First New Chronicle and Good Govern ment), a famous manuscript written around 1615 by Amerindian chronicler Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala to describe colonial Andean society, and request King Philip Ill of Spain to reform the viceregal government in order to save the Andean people from exploitation, disease, and racial mixing, synonymous with the destruction of the native culture.
In Buen Gobierno, Gamarra Heshiki builds her project on a conflicted space. She shows how the origin of Latin Ame rican nations is intimately linked to the birth of Spain/Europe itself, and how a critical look at the «good government» of these two legacies is key to building other forms of coexistence. Four hundred years after this manuscript, this racial and cultural mixing has not resulted in the disappearance of these civilizations but has instead-painfully, arduously, and almost in spite of each other-contributed to their development.
Agustín Pérez Rubio
