Playing with Cultural Expectations: La Chola Poblete and the Nazca Lines

The floor of the exhibition hall is covered with archaic-looking line drawings. They are reminiscent of cave paintings or indigenous art, while also exuding a contemporary essence as graffiti, minimalist comic depictions, or logos. A giant bird can be discerned, as well as a dancing or leaping human form, a figure made of ornamental triangles and squares. Among these, shapes drawn from present-day existence also materialize: the numeral two intersected by a crosshair, a circle housing both a crown and abstract configurations.

This work draws its inspiration from the immense Nazca lines, also known as geoglyphs, etched into the terrain of the Nazca desert in southern Peru by human hands between 800 BC and 450 AD. The lines are usually 10 to 15 cm deep. While most traverse the expansive landscape in straight trajectories, there are also figurative representations of animals and vegetation. Over seventy of these illustrations take on zoomorphic forms, encompassing a hummingbird, a spider, a fish, a condor, a heron, a monkey, a lizard, a dog, a cat, and a human figure. The largest are up to 370 meters long. Even today, there is no consensus among scientists about what triggered the drawings.

Hypotheses about their purpose range from potential irrigation systems to astrological markers, with a prevailing inclination toward religious significance. The amazing thing about these terrestrial depictions is their vast scale, rendering the motifs and configurations most comprehensible when viewed from an aerial perspective at approximately 500 meters above ground. The earliest documented reference to them within the European context comes from the writings of Spanish conquistador and historian Pedro Cieza de León (1520-1554), who categorizes them as "waymarkers" in his Crónica del Perú (History of Peru) published in 1553. Owing to his candid account of the brutalities committed during the conquest and governance of the region, his work remained unpublished for three centuries thereafter. In the consciousness of the “conquerors” and colonial powers, the Nazca lines drifted into obscurity.

While partially observable from nearby hills, the lines truly captured attention with the advent of air travel over the Nasca Desert in the 1920s. In 1926, the Peruvian archaeologist Toribio Mejía Xesspe documented his findings of these lines during his hikes. Across the border, American historian Paul Kosok embarked on a mission in Peru to validate his hypothesis that the lines represented ancient irrigation systems. He soon recognized their astronomical significance as the lines converged with the horizon during the southern hemisphere’s winter solstice. However, the Nazca lines have never been clearly explained. Their global prominence emerged through the assertions of Swiss author and UFO researcher Erich von Däniken in his 1969 bestseller "Chariots of the Gods," wherein he proposed "ancient astronauts" as their architects. But this notion was refuted in the early 2000s by Joe Nickell, an American art historian and paranormal phenomena investigator, who demonstrated that the lines could have been crafted by small groups using basic tools within a brief timeframe. Thanks to advancements like drones and artificial intelligence, more than a hundred additional drawings have come to light since then.

La Chola Poblete places the observer in a position akin to soaring above a landscape from significant altitudes where, as in the Nasca Desert, shapes are unearthed and imbued with meanings. She not only shows the similarity with symbols from today's mass and pop culture, but also poses the question: How would one judge today's Latin American or indigenous cultures from such an elevated standpoint? She refers to these cultures, but also plays, as she does in her wallpapers and banners, with the expectations projected onto her as an Indigenous artist. Consequently, the figure on the floor mirrors the unbridled non-binary forms on the wallpaper, which could easily be dancing at a rave. She counters the ingrained and stereotypical notions of authenticity, primal connection to nature, tradition, and spirituality which are often still associated with Indigenous culture even in the art world, with a hybrid concept of culture: “I perceive the exhibition space as a canvas where Andean symbols coexist harmoniously alongside rock band icons and brand logos.”