This event is part of a series – see below for details.February 7, 2025 10:00 a.m.
PACHA: ancestral evolutions, Murals by Ccopacatty featured in the Main Hall as part of the two-part exhibition Graphic Voices of Latin America
Event Details
Graphic Voices of Latin America is a two-part exhibition: Latin American Posters by Gráfica Latina & La Linterna (2/13 – 3/23) in the gallery and PACHA: ancestral evolutions, Murals by Ccopacatty (2/6 – 2/26) in the Main Hall at the WaterFire Arts Center.
PACHA: ancestral evolutions, Murals by Ccopacatty is on view from Thursday, February 6 to Wednesday, February 26, 2025, in the WaterFire Arts Center Main Hall with an opening reception on Thursday, February 6th from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. Visitors are invited to return the following week on Thursday, February 13th from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. for the opening reception of the simultaneous exhibition of Latin American Posters by Gráfica Latina & La Linterna in the gallery of the WaterFire Arts Center.
“Pacha,” rooted in the Aymara and Quechua cosmology, refers to the concept of time and space as an interconnected whole. It embodies the relationship between the physical world, the spiritual realm, and human existence, offering a profound framework through which to understand Ccopacatty’s large-scale murals.
“In Aymara logic and language the past is in front of us because it is known and the future is behind us because we haven’t seen it. My work has this same relationship to time and distance, reminding me of my history. My spirit doesn’t forget ancient dimensions and the urgency to connect the future to the past in recording the social drama of a universal humanity, a sometimes forgotten or disregarded humanity, with its own powerful value,” states Ccopacatty.
There will be seven of Ccopacatty’s large-scale murals on display which explore his transition from an Andean boyhood grown to an adult global reaction in images of his inherited Aymara Andean experience as prototypes of humanity.
The opening reception will take place on Thursday, February 6 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. with an Indigenous smudging ceremony by Gray Fox, Fire Keeper for the Royal House of the Pokanokets, and performances by artist, culture bearer, conservator, teacher, and community organizer, Aymar Ccopacatty and Irma Alvarez Ccoscco, Quechua poet and linguistic activist.
“We are excited to share Ccopacatty’s extraordinary and rarely seen artwork with you this month,” says Barnaby Evans, Artistic Director and CEO of WaterFire Providence. “Ccopacatty’s stunning, powerful murals demand that we reexamine the complex history of cultural impacts, including the clashes of civilizations and the devastating consequences of ecocide on the natural world. Spanning nearly 500 years of struggle and, from his monumental 97-foot mural “Invasion” to the environmental destruction of the “Exxon Valdez” disaster, Ccopacatty’s work offers a profound and timely call to action.”
A special thank you to the Andean Cultural Center of RI for their support.
Peruko Ccopacatty, b.1946
Peruko Ccopacatty is an international artist recognized for his more than four decades of producing monumental metal works and murals. Born on the shores of Lake Titicaca in the Peruvian Andes, Ccopacatty is an artist of Aymara heritage. His work expresses the identity of his people and their rich historical background, focusing on the power of an art that synthesizes and expresses universal humanity.
Ccopacatty studied at the National School of Fine Arts of Peru, where he graduated in 1976 and was awarded the Gold Medal, the highest recognition awarded by the School in the specialty of sculpture. In 1981 he migrated to the United States of America and settled in the state of Rhode Island, where he maintains a studio in the town of West Kingston.
Ccopacatty’s work, with solid structure, is exuberant, dynamic, tragic. His aesthetics are born from his life in the Andes and from his culture: the Aymara people. This is the starting point of the themes he works on and explores: family, work, struggle and triumph. He is, in short, the sculptor of universal human drama. “My sculptures have a relationship with time and distance. My history reminds me; my spirit does not forget this dimension. As a sculptor I have the urgency to connect w the past with the future, I am still answering this question. It has to do with a research process: prehistoric stone, modern techniques, unification.”
Coopacatty’s art, dramatic and monumental, is notable for its particular ability to define movement, whose dynamism is sustained by the open construction of his pieces. About this search he says: “I explore the dynamics of movement and externalize the internal structure of the human form.”
Dancers and doctors find particular satisfaction in Coopacatty’s work, the former for the way the artist captures the intermediate gesture between one movement and another, the latter are surprised by his precision in the representation of the human structure, capable of expressing itself beyond the limits of the material itself. The fluidity achieved in his metal work comes from Coopacatty’s insistence on “mastering the technique, mastering the material.”
Ccopacatty is interested in art as communication, in large-scale art as a form of sharing. The sculpture, murals and reliefs follow a common thread: that of a monumental and heroic humanity.
