In her new work Apuntes Americanos-Kanay, Roxana Barba investigates the ancestral Peruvian cosmovision, the cyclical character of time, and the European campaigns of cultural extraction in Peru. To reinterpret an archaeological excavation, the performers travel through time cleaning the material remains of an ancient civilization. This multi-sensory performance suggests a ritual of decolonization and transformation, comparing journeys to virtual landscapes, narrated in Quechua, with digitized travel books by 19th-century French explorers.
“Dr. Carol Damian, Curator of MDC’s Kislak Center, introduces the performance with a brief talk about the pre-Hispanic context, illustrated by some of the compelling objects in the Jay I. Kislak Collection of the Early Americas, Exploration and Navigation.”