Transcript

Hi my name is Hiwa K. I’m a Kurdish artist from Iraq living in Germany.

For the new work, it was quite difficult to make this work because somewhere I heard about that the Incas thought that those guys were wearing pots on their heads. So the Incas thought the conquistadors were wearing pots on their heads and they thought they were lamas, not human beings because they haven’t seen a horse and they haven’t seen a man on the horse so they thought it was maybe one animal, the whole thing. Also through their own tradition waiting for the gods and also you know the whole tension that one day they would come back. But also at the same time it’s about a history written by one party, a history written by the Spanish or the Europeans where they think that the Incas thought they were gods.

But going back to the story of how it started I saw it somewhere and I asked around; many people told me this doesn’t exist what you talk about and I said but they said they thought they were wearing pots. And I took quite a while then I watched around 20 to 30 documentaries and I didn’t see that and by accident one of them I saw that guy named Efren Trelis (sp?) who is an art historian. He said it exist, comes from a book from Guaman Poma, a book from 16th century, it’s called Nueva coronica which means the new chronicle. And then I started working more on it and making research and mostly they are sketches which called Salute, God of Thunder. It’s mostly comes from my conversations with Efren Trelis about that and he’s originally from Incas who didn’t forget this language he learn learned, they pass this language to him.

Yet it’s very much about that and I was thinking that was the plan to ask a blacksmith here to make the helmet of Pissarro or of the conquistadors. And it was a long research of so many books and said the design didn’t exists at that time, so it took time. Then went to Trujillo where Pissarro was born and lived until he was 23. And I collected some narratives around him also; he was a bastard and his mom left him on the stairs of the church. So it’s a helmet from the 16th century, it’s not sure that it’s from him but it’s original of that time, according to many researchers. So I didn’t decide from one helmet but more or less made a combination of what could be.