Ingrid has a special connection to the ancient roots of the earth. She is bound with nature, symbols and rituals. She has a specific sort of respect for shamans, knowing them not as witches but instead as the wise people who knew the knowledge of herbs and health and secrets of nature.
Her professional path took a new directlon when she was a student in university. She decided to stop studying business administration and redirect her time and energy to her old desire of being an artist. She purposely chose to study at a photography school in Lima, which was founded in 90’s and focused on psychoanalysis and photography. Now she had the time and insight to look and see what photography meant to her, conceptually and technically.
“Photography changed my state of mind and relationship with the world,” says Ingrid. The portrait project she did of her family, left her with a deep impact and some sort of internal emotional healing. Because her family are immigrants, she had to travel around to make a portrait of them. The experience was like putting bones of a body back together again. Migration is a painful phenomenon within Peru, the history goes back to 70’s when people from rural areas started going to big cities. Due to colonization, they have lost nature, language and this was with the feeling of displacement, violence, loosing identity and home. It is also important for her to contribute to preserving Quechua (Inca’s native language) as a Peruvian artist.
photos by PILOTENKUECHE International Art Program
Her thirst for making art took her to London. She still works with Photography but her studies in M.A. of fine art opened a space for thinking even wider. “Not just clicking and see what comes out after, but also the process of photography, directing a photo and the dialog you can have with the space and all the surroundings in a photo including the performance in the course of the photography,” said Ingrid.
Ingrid’s Peruvian origins has her telling stories. She tells me a memory about a Shaman who gave her a cup of his potion and tell her “now I’m giving you the Art”. In shamanic culture Art means knowledge to heal and see yourself and your environment and find what you have lost. Going to a shamanic ceremony got her thinking, what those individuals were trying to find. In a post-colonial community, what have people lost collectively. It makes her question the active role of an artist in the position of having that “Art” in a society as a shaman in a community, this makes the fundament of her work, her concern and her quest.
Her enthusiasm for story telling furthers her works in making film. Currently Ingrid is doing photography and filmmaking alongside with other mediums such as wool, stones, woods and etc. for making installations and performances.
Here in PILOTENKEUCHE her project is a fusion of parallel methods specifically textiles and knitting skill from Quichuan culture and language, In a figurative narration of an oral story or a myth. The myth is about now and about the fires in the Amazon, 20 years of deforesting Peruvian Amazon, combined with the concept of migration and with the strong play of nature.
written by Elnaz
image supplied by artist
you can find out more about Ingrid on her website, and you can come down to the following shows to see more of what she is doing.
Reset unsettling flesh layers / vernissage / PK at AHS
Friday, 15. November 2019
19:00 bis 22:00
performance: Ingrid Pumayalla
Alte Handelsschule, Gießerstraße 75, Kleinzschocher, 04229 Leipzig, Deutschland
Lichtspiel des Westens
Karl Heine
Saturday 7 December 2019
16.00 – 22.00
Overwhelmed incorporeal happiness / vernissage / PK RD41
Saturday, 14. December 2019
19:00 – 22:00
PILOTENKEUCHE, Franz-Flemming-Straße 9, 04179 Leipzig