The chakra

In her exhibition, Ccoyllor Espinoza brings together a video and a series of drawings in which rural life is captured through gesture, language, and colour. The video is a montage of scenes filmed on the family farm in the Peruvian Andes, where she has recently begun living and working for a few months each year. The artist captures snapshots of her daily life with her phone, interrupting herself mid-task. The lives of the animals intertwine with a succession of actions carried out by those around her, against a background of vegetation that fills the frame. They braid, shell, cut, chop, dig, and sow. The use of black and white renders this narrative, devoid of storytelling, both timeless and difficult to place in specific contexts. Quechua words appear like flashes across the filmed scenes. Inhabited by this language  without truly mastering it, the artist attempts to reclaim it by imprinting the words onto the images. Kutiy, the video's title, translates as to return, to come back, and is also used to signal oxen to retrace their steps when plowing fields. And that is precisely what the artist does: she returns to the places of her history, where she filmed this video, once back in Montreal. From this duality emerge French words against a white background, conceived as poems, as if this second language alone were enough to produce images for the audience. Sound in these fragments of rural life, empty of dialogue, acts as a guiding thread throughout the filmed moments: the clash of a machete, the suckling of a breast, the crackling of a fire. Kutiy thus paints a timeless portrait of the chakra (which means farm in Quechua) through her daily life and work with the land. Alongside this video, monochrome drawings in dry pastel reveal lots of earthy and organic colors: brick, flesh, granite, grass, soil. While the undulations evoke cavities, the artist is not so much trying to represent the landscapes of the Andes. She speaks of the temperature of these places and attempts to revive the impression these spaces leave on her. Human or animal figures sometimes hide within the lines and textures, while a figurative drawing stands out from the series of monochromes. In an all-over display of vegetation and insects, the eye is overwhelmed and doesn't know where to rest. The richness of this botanical composition is counterbalanced by the treatment in shades of gray. Deprived of color, this drawing is reminiscent of the video, acting as a link between two ways of showing: drawing and moving images.