Paucar’s work recasts Western histories in the context of his Indigenous Andean world. Marcelinho documents a performance during which the artist mounted a bicycle wheel onto a stool in the middle of a large forest clearing in Peru, reimagining Marcel Duchamp’s famous readymade (a sculpture created from found objects). He removed the spokes, buried them, and set the stool on fire. Only the wheel’s metal rim remained, which Paucar then rolled around the grass using a stick. He recalled, “When I saw Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel at a museum in Berlin. . . . it made me remember how I would play with a bicycle wheel as a child.”
Gallery label from 2022
“I think one produces art in order to understand oneself,” Paucar once said. He makes art about his memories, his Andean culture, and nature.
The artist remembers that when he was a child, he would use a stick to push a bicycle wheel around. In Marcelinho he plays that game again, in the middle of a field.
Look at this image closely to see some of what Paucar does with the wheel. How do you think it changed as he played with it? What questions would you ask the artist?
Kids label from 2022