Reaching for Gold with Silvana Pestana
It was 24 December 2018 when I landed in Lima for a family holiday, the starting point for a long trip around Peru. I decided to text Silvana few days before and ask to meet for coffee. I only met Silviana and her husband Alfredo very briefly at Pinta Art Fair in London back in 2014, when we had an interesting conversation about Latin American art.
Silvana Pestana in her garden, image credit to ‘COSAS’ Peru magazine
After a quick morning visit to the MALI museum in Lima, home to an excellent collection of modern Peruvian art, I was excited to reconnect with Silvana who kindly welcomed my husband and I in her beautiful home and art studio over the hills of Lima. Set in a curated garden, I immediately noticed one of Silvana’s sculptures featuring Cactuses covered in gold, set amongst a lush vegetation.
Cactus are symbols of protection since very ancient times, used for magical-religious rites. Their size and roughness make them useful as a natural barrier or defense against invaders. Huachuma I (2017), the title of Silvana’s sculpture pictured below, refers to the sacred cactus often used during ceremonies.
There is also a legend that this rough and severe looking cactus is a vehicle to absorb electromagnetic waves providing serenity, good omens, energy and lucidity.
“San Pedro” is the post-colonial name given to the psychoactive Andean cactus known under different names. ‘Huachuma’ is the old Qechua name, which means: ‘vision’ or ’that which makes one drunk’. It is a visionary cactus with an amazing potential for healing. Seeing the world through its “eyes”, is like being born again, but this time consciously.
SILVANA PESTANA
Huachuma I (2017)
Bronze Sculptures
90 x 60 x 40 cm
2017
Gold is a recurrent theme in Silvana’s work as a reminder of the current socio-environmental problems created by illegal mining in the Amazon region, particularly reaching for gold. Mercury is mainly used for the metal extraction causing several issues from water pollution to general contamination of flora and fauna in the region. I was reading an article about this issue on the Guardian that said: ‘‘The mercury dumped by miners settles in the sediments at the bottom of the rivers and gets converted into an organic form, Methylmercury, which is absorbed by biological organisms and concentrated up the food chain’’.
Silvana starts her work with an unprimed linen canvas on which she layers colours upon colours and textured shapes created with molds from fish scales. This is not a purely stylistic detail. One of the largest fish, called Paiche, is native of the Amazon river and has been mostly endangered by water pollution, habitat loss and overfishing. I am enclosing below some pictures I took of Silvana’s studio where the magic is created.
“I address the socio-environmental catastrophe caused by illegal mining, particularly gold mining in the jungle. The gold obtained with impressive devastations that no artistic trend confronts. Not even the one mainly motivated by the vocation of denunciation. Political or social or ecological. A silence perhaps linked to a certain aberrant consideration by predators whose supposed popular origin seeks to exempt them from all responsibility towards the land and its inhabitants”
© Silvana Pestana
Husband Alfredo Barreda is the co-founder of the Contemporary Art Museum in Lima. In the past twenty years, Alfredo and Silvana have created an extensive collection of the best modern artists in Peru, painters and sculptors, with a focus on artworks made between 1975 and 2010. It is so refreshing to see how a collection reflect the owners passion about supporting local artists and try to protect their future legacy.
As we walk around to see the rest of the art collection, I was struck by yet another sculpture by Silvana in a smaller garden, a circle of young women, indigenous of the Amazon, is shown with the gesture of giving and receiving; possibly the sculpture is a metaphor of a child fragility after their personal and environmental resources are exploited. Silvana’s earlier work focus on more figurative aspects and photography, alongside sculpture and painting.
© Silvana Pestana - Photo by Daniela Bianco
Silvana has joined forces in the past years with Ginsberg Galeria, a contemporary art gallery in the Miraflores district, not far from the incredible Amano Pre-columbian textile Museum where the artist is often inspired. Here are some images from Silvana’s latest show at the gallery in 2019. I love the new paintings incorporating sometimes a more minimalist black and white approach. Join Silvana and me next Tuesday 22nd December at 9pm GMT on IG Live for an interview from her studio in Lima, visit my instagram page for more information: https://www.instagram.com/p/CI3JqzRniXp/
