The ideas that inhabit the air. Artists in dialogue with “The three halves of Ino Moxo”

Abstract

This essay seeks to analyze how Cesar Calvo, in his novel “The Three Halves of Ino Moxo: Teachings of the Wizard of the Upper Amazon” (1981) establishes a dialogue with other arts — photography, music, painting—, and to review the projects that have gradually emerged as “ideas in the air”, eventually unfolding as the author’s work is recovered as a 21st century milestone. The analysis aims also to consolidate the piece’s value as a key contribution to the dialogue between literature and visual arts in Peru. Finally, the essay proposes that César Calvo’s novel -in how it understands and affirms the dialogues between diverse artistic forms and media- is fundamental to the development of contemporary visual arts language in the Peruvian Amazon.

For this purpose, the paper is divided into four sections. The first reviews the works of prominent artists of the 20th century Amazon pictorial tradition, who appear in Calvo’s narrative as fictional characters. The second section analyzes various documents -photographs, audios, letters, silkscreens, among others- accounting for the exchange between the writer and other artists that accompanied him throughout the creation of the novel. At a different level in terms of how it relates to the piece, the third part highlights other creators who, parallel to Calvo’s work, have also researched Ayahuasca sessions and the shared knowledge these processes bring about. Finally, the last section reviews some reinterpretation proposals that have come up in the 21st century in the visual arts. Altogether, these four approaches seek to represent, from different perspectives, the fruitful dialogues that have stemmed from the novel, a piece that brings us ever closer to a particular way of understanding and appreciating the traditions of indigenous Amazonian communities.