Artist, Armando Andrade Tudela: My name is Armando Andrade Tudela. Huaco Deforme is a 16 millimeter film, in which I documented pottery.
The pottery is Chancay, which is a minor culture that developed in the north of Lima. And Chancay is one of the only, if not the only culture, that decided to preserve deformed or useless pottery. It's one of the only cultures that's almost monochrome and they were very minimalist in the way of using iconography. Exactly because of that, Chancay has this sort of relation to modernism that has appealed a lot to artists through history.
The idea would be to understand this as an object that because it has become useless, it actually becomes a work of art. It's this lack of utility that was really important. What I wanted was to show the deformation, not to show the entire object. It's not a document. It's not archeological research. It's not making reference to anything other than the deformity of this turning object.
The turning around produced a sort of optic effect in which lights and shadow created this almost dreamlike situation. But this interplay of lights and shadow could only happen because the huaco, the ceramic, was deformed.
Using a Chancay ceramic was a very strong and very specific choice. Huaco Deforme is a response to how I position myself in relation to my legacy, my identity as a contemporary artist, and in relation what Peruvian pre-Columbian heritage is.