The representation of the Andean landscape in contemporary indigenous art from Tablas de Sarhua

Tablas de Sarhua are the traditional pictorial art of the Sarhua people, located in the southern Andean region of Peru. This contemporary indigenous art, declared Cultural Heritage of the Nation in 2018, consists of painted boards or qelqay that depict the interactions of the population with their natural environment. This study analyzes the representation of the rural Andean landscape of Sarhua through an examination of the visual components of qelqay. The tablas feature a bottom-to-top visual structure and consist of pictorial scenes depicting activities, objects, nature, and families of Sarhua. The qelqay are not only an art of resistance and cultural memory, but also a means of interpreting the landscape in which the artisan is the main agent. Although the tablas have changed in size and materiality, they still function as images with agency that preserve indigenous ways of conceiving the contemporary Andean territory.