JORGE EIELSON: ABOUT SHAMANS, PHILOSOPHIES AND NARRATIVES
EIELSON quipucamayoc is Jorge Eielson's exhibition at Travesía Cuatro gallery.
The term shaman comes from the Tungus languages (Siberia) and means "he who knows". A shaman is thus a figure who makes predictions, healing practices, invocation to the gods and who, having a special connection with nature, is usually a good advisor on behavior, and therefore has the ability to modify reality or the perception of it. In the specific case of American cultures, shamans have been active members of the community since pre-Hispanic times, focusing mainly on rituals for the harvest and good weather omens.
With a restless and profound nature, Eielson explored his intellectual gifts by nourishing himself with universal literature, European philosophy, as well as the scientific paradigms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At the same time, he opened a space of spiritual search within Zen Buddhism. This multiple perspective made him become aware of the world and reality from his own experience as an exile and nomad; but this is only a small expression of his versatility, since he found in poetry and art the last redoubt of an almost extinct humanism, of a humanism that could be practiced in the margins of modern exhibitionism. Thus, poetry was not a simple linguistic exercise or artistic creation, but, in a more complex way, a place of political resistance. Poetry was for Eielson the last redoubt from which one could be a legitimate shaman.
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Jorge Eielson, EIELSON quipucamayoc, vista general. Travesía Cuatro Madrid, España.
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Jorge Eielson, EIELSON quipucamayoc, vista general. Travesía Cuatro Madrid, España.
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Jorge Eielson, Untitled, n.d.
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Jorge Eielson, EIELSON quipucamayoc, vista general. Travesía Cuatro Madrid, España.
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Jorge Eielson, EIELSON quipucamayoc, vista general. Travesía Cuatro Madrid, España.
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Jorge Eielson, EIELSON quipucamayoc, vista general. Travesía Cuatro Madrid, España.
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Jorge Eielson, EIELSON quipucamayoc, vista general. Travesía Cuatro Madrid, España.
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Jorge Eielson, EIELSON quipucamayoc, vista general. Travesía Cuatro Madrid, España.
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Jorge Eielson, Nodo, 2001.
In the ancient civilizations of Peru, the quipucamayoc were the mathematicians-accountants who kept the population registers and controlled the harvests, but they were also responsible for recording narratives and myths. Therefore, they had the authority to handle information on administrative and narrative matters. The high title granted to these " experts" gave them the role of visionaries, authorized them to handle population and harvest data and, fundamentally, made them qualified hermeneuts to interpret the cosmos.
Eielson quipucamayoc covers important moments of this cultured man who recovers the role of the Latin American shaman, of this man who covers fundamental moments of Peru's visual culture, of this man who reactivates the production of the South American quipu, of this man who opens a moral perspective to renew the world. It would seem that only a decentralized position –life outside his country of origin– could give him the objectivity to speak with authority about Peru. Jorge Eduardo Eielson is one of the most critical poets and artists of his country and one of the figures who most reproves consumer societies. However, Eielson is not only a critic, but also a healer who reestablishes the order of the cosmos through the containment and release of energy concentrated in a knot.
–Patrick Charpenel.
EIELSON quipucamayoc. Solo exhibition by Jorge Eielson.
Until April 27, 2024.
Travesía Cuatro. Calle de San Mateo 16, 28004 Madrid, Spain.
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