King Fernando II sent a crucified Christ sculpture to Peru in the 1500s to indoctrinate the Quechua natives. Once it arrived at El Callao's port it was transported by an "arriero" with a cart and donkeys. After a long journey, the greedy man sold the beautifully white Christ to collectors. He then hired a local "imaginero" artisan to carve another one as a copy. The man carved it out of Maguey cactus pieces and balsa wood. This image was delivered to the Jesuites in Cuzco.
After several years inside the Cuzco cathedral, the image became dark with all the smoke from the candles. In the 1600's it survived a very devastating earthquake. The people in Cuzco called him "the lord of the earthquakes. " El señor de los Temblores.
My inspiration was to make an activist, postmodern appropriation of the icon, and carve it as a new mestizo-African Christ. (Colescott, R. 1992) Betye Saar in her work The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, 1972, also uses the Aunt Jemima icon to transform it into a protest activist act. Alison Saar created a stunning wood sculpture confronting race as a female African American Sweet Magnolia, 1993,
Alison Saar. Sweet Magnolia. 1993
Taytacha Temblores-
Lord of the Earthquakes.. Cuzco Cathedral
C Llerena Aguirre, pen and ink drawing, sketchbook
Preparatory drawings for a woodcut print and two pages for a graphic novel book. The concept is "Sendero Luminoso" or Shining Path, and how they killed half a million natives in Peru. It was a 20-year-old civil war. The conceptual Christ symbolizes the pain of the people.