Wasi Llamkha (lugar y tacto)
2025
Wasi Llamkha (place and touch) is an installation created specifically for the south patio of the Centro de Cultura Contemporánea Condeduque in Madrid.
It is a form of ephemeral architecture. Each of its levels features surfaces covered with different materials and textures, designed to be touched and experienced with the whole body. The installation brings together two mnemonic traditions, or practices of artificial memory. On one hand, it draws from the pre-Columbian tradition of ancient Peru, where memory was activated through touch—such as with the quipu, a knotted-string device read by hand. On the other, it references the use of architecture as a structure for organizing memory, following the tradition of ars memorativa (commonly known today as the “memory palace”), a method originating in ancient Greece that evolved over time, reaching its height during the Renaissance. The installation is accompanied by a text written by the artist, proposing a discourse to be memorized in relation to each of the structure’s levels. The piece revisits the ars memorativa, replacing imagined space with tangible architecture and visual images with tactile ones. It functions as an embodied exercise, an invitation to reflect on the relationship between materiality and information, and on how alternative forms of knowledge might be integrated in ways that blur the boundaries between mind and body.
Link to text (spanish and english)
Wasi Llamkha (place and touch) is an installation created specifically for the south patio of the Centro de Cultura Contemporánea Condeduque in Madrid.
It is a form of ephemeral architecture. Each of its levels features surfaces covered with different materials and textures, designed to be touched and experienced with the whole body. The installation brings together two mnemonic traditions, or practices of artificial memory. On one hand, it draws from the pre-Columbian tradition of ancient Peru, where memory was activated through touch—such as with the quipu, a knotted-string device read by hand. On the other, it references the use of architecture as a structure for organizing memory, following the tradition of ars memorativa (commonly known today as the “memory palace”), a method originating in ancient Greece that evolved over time, reaching its height during the Renaissance. The installation is accompanied by a text written by the artist, proposing a discourse to be memorized in relation to each of the structure’s levels. The piece revisits the ars memorativa, replacing imagined space with tangible architecture and visual images with tactile ones. It functions as an embodied exercise, an invitation to reflect on the relationship between materiality and information, and on how alternative forms of knowledge might be integrated in ways that blur the boundaries between mind and body.