of doubtful provenance

Sofía Lozano’s project investigates the past of the Tumaco-La Tolita culture, which occupied the Pacific coast of what we now know as Ecuador and Colombia —specifically from the province of Esmeraldas in Ecuador to the north of Buenaventura in Colombia. Its area of influence extended across a territory of roughly 250,000 square kilometres. The history of Tumaco-La Tolita is the result of a long and complex process of mobility, adaptation, continuation, transformation, exchange and cultural evolution, which could be said to begin around 9000 BC with the presence of the Las Vegas culture, one of the first peoples of the Ecuadorian coast, who lived in small groups moving from place to place in search of food. In this sense it is possible to venture an approach, and to propose an account of doubtful provenance about the origin of the Tumaco-La Tolita culture: the Las Vegas culture is the foundation for the development of the Valdivia culture, the first pottery-making culture of Abya Yala, which was the basis for the Chorrera culture, which later became Jama Coaque, who at their cultural height came to be known as Tumaco-La Tolita. Today we stand far from all that; the colonial present and the AD have left us only with fragments, fictions or memories. We do not really know whether the culture was called Tumaco-La Tolita, Valdivia or Las Vegas; those names relate to the places where pre-colonial remains were looted or found, and they may even be fictions archaeology created to justify its “discoveries”. If we used a GPS as the reference for the site, the culture would have a name in coordinates. Through drawing, Lozano speaks of the fragility of maps, of pre-colonial pieces and fragments, to propose a work that erases borders, unifies the territory and questions the fictitious account of colonial archaeological heritage as being of doubtful provenance. “Heritage” answers to a long protocol of colonial verifications that determine what is exhibited, what is told and what is not. Archaeological pieces can be anachronistic objects that may say a great deal or nothing at all; they belong to one culture or another, but in the end they turn out to belong to our culture and to this time.












 

Rubén Díaz Chávez.

This project was developed during the residency at No Lugar, Quito, Ecuador, from 1 to 29 October 2023.