:: 2018 :: 45cm x 60cm :: Acrylics, Inks, Markers and Coca Mambe on Canvas ::
This artwork is essentially the same as the UV image for Only One Track Leads Heavenwards, but rendered in a similar style to Guayapabi Sewa Hitcha. The title and imagery are inspired by Catherine J. Allen's book 'The Hold Life Has', which narrates coca-based rituals, teachings and lifeways among a Quechua-speaking people in a village called Sonqo in the high Peruvian paramo above Cuzco. The central feature of the UV image is therefore Pachamama. She is flanked by eight women in coca seed boats bearing sacred gifts, as per a vision I had in Colombia.
The title is in Quechua, and means roughly 'house of offerings', or ‘samincha house’. The word sami in Quechua means ‘supernatural power, animating essence’ (like Polynesian mana), and the samincha is a ritual of blowing - phukuy in Quechua - on coca leaves to release the sami contained within them, to gift it back to the cosmos, and particularly to Pachamama in gratitude. During the creation of this artwork, I was again sitting ceremony with the madre de ayu at home, when a little chant - in what I hope is comprehensible Quechua! - came to me based on what I was both reading and creating:
| Corazon de coca, mamachaq wasin, kokapa Sonqo, samipa wasin, samiyuq kanki, santuyuq wasin, saminchata ñoqa phukuchkani arí! |
Heart of coca, house of the Mother, coca of Sonqo, house of sami, you are full of sami, you are truly holy, I blow a samincha offering, I blow phukuy, yes! |
