Como pieles divinas: La convivencia de materiales, tecnicas, imagenes religiosas y wak’as en trajes y mascaras festivas siglos XIX-XX

Abstract

This text invites you to rethink the concept of “syncretism” understood as a religious merger where the hybridization is a praise to the fruitful alliances, spread under the term miscegenation. This paradigm has overshadowed deeply particular logic and aesthetics like the Andean. Consequently, this investigation starts from the study of festive items: costumes and masks that are analyzed from the coexistence of Andean and colonial aesthetics and practices, as well as the adaptation or acceptance of the coincidences between these two world-representation systems. This coexistence allows us to understand how the materials, techniques, iconography, wak’as religious images, and rituals make the vitality of these objects possible. They have animu(spirit), ch’ama (force, vigor) and they are provided with such a powerful agency that if they’re not treated with ch’alla offerings, they can have positive or negative effect on those who wear these sacred skins.