At four years of age, life changed for Aymar when he moved with his mother to Rhode Island. Since that time, he has lived between two cultures: one on the Peru side of Lake Titicaca (the highest lake in the world at 12,500 feet above sea level), where his family’s small community still lives and speaks the Aymara language; and the other in Providence, Rhode Island, never far from water and where he received two degrees from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).
At age 15, Aymar began noticing the negative environmental impacts of globalization, especially those caused by plastics. While studying sculpture at the RISD, he began working with recycled materials, replacing the traditional fibers he used with recycled plastic. While his art combines Andean spinning, weaving, and knitting techniques, he doesn’t wish to be called a fiber artist. For him, from an Indigenous perspective, art—as in life—is all circular, all one.
His environmentally based sculptural work circles back to his Andean roots on Lake Titicaca where the making of wampus, traditional reed boats, is still practiced. Aymar learned this skill of boatmaking when young, but now instead of using the Totora reed native to Lake Titicaca, he chooses non-traditional materials: plastic bottles, woven plastic, and phragmites reed. He recognizes that plastics are hard to conserve, which is problematic for any institution considering one of his pieces for their collection.
During the Q&A portion of Aymar’s ATA presentation “Andean Textile Traditions in Contemporary Art and Beyond,” he spoke straight from the core to address many pressing issues. The topics ranged from the repatriation of museums’ collections to intellectual property rights and who has the right to lay claim to the objects being removed from Indigenous gravesites, to the colonialist attitude towards the Indigenous peoples, and so much more.
“So many burials have been dug up in Peru,” he said. “There is so much traditional cultural wealth under the ground . . . None of it is staying where it was dug up . . . You can’t count on the government of Peru to speak up for its people.”
In addressing another question, “How can we use and display a piece in a way that respects its meaning and its energy?” Aymar replied, “Don’t just keep it on the wall and let the sun bleach it. Take it for a walk. If you have a moment that’s important in your life, bring it with you . . . Don’t frame it . . . let it breathe.”
This highlights another focus Aymar is currently working on—a pilot program at RISD where they are looking at the overall health of the textiles in their collection. He has held ceremonies to welcome back ancient Andean textiles that hadn’t seen the light of day in a very long time.
Towards the end of his talk, Aymar focused on the “crisis in archeology.” Stating that, “You can’t use past archeology practices today.” The sharing of weaving publicly engages and teaches. “It instills pride in the past, feeding it back, instilling cultural pride.”
Learn more about Aymar and his studio art practice on his website, follow him on Instagram a.y.m.a.r.t., watch his 2018 Museum of International Folk Art project, and view his ATA webinar “Andean Textile Traditions in Contemporary Art and Beyond” on our YouTube channel.
