MOCA Moving Images: PARACAS
Wednesday, 01/22/2020 – 07:00 pm – 09:00 pm
Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami
770 NE 125th Street,
Miami, Florida 33161
RSVP / Register
Cost: Free

The Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami (MOCA) is pleased to present a screening of Cecilia Vicuña’s 1983 film, PARACAS, on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2020. The screening will be followed by a presentation by Dr. Constantino Manuel Torres on anthropology, shamanism, and the pre-Colombian Paracas culture of the Atacama Desert.

In the film PARACAS, Vicuña animates a 2000-year-old pre-Columbian textile created in the Paracas/Nazca region of Perú. Figures from the ancient textile come to life to perform an imagined ancient ritual in a miniature world created by the artist, set in the poetic universe of a desert transformed into a garden by its ancient inhabitants. Original music was composed and performed specifically for this work by José Pérez de Arce and Claudio Mercado, with chants by Vicuña. The original Paracas textile is in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum.

Following the film, Dr. Constantino Manuel Torres will speak on the topic of on anthropology, shamanism, and the pre-Colombian Paracas culture of the Atacama Desert. Dr. Constantino Manuel Torres, Professor Emeritus, Art and Art History Department at Florida International University, Miami, has conducted research on the connection between iconography and visionary plant use in ancient cultures of the South Central Andes since 1982. He co-authored “Anadenanthera: Visionary Plant of Ancient South America” (2006), a 4,000-year history of the use of this sacred plant, which led to the study of ayahuasca analogues in South American antiquity. He has been the recipient of four Fulbright Fellowships.