Rebeca Romero
Intangible Totem | Dawn, Dusk, Noontide




Intangible Totem | Dawn, Dusk, Noontide by Rebeca Romero is a video installation consisting of three animated digital sculptures. The artist’s process begins with three-dimensional scans of original Mochica vessels, relics from the pre-Columbian civilization of Northern Peru. These vessels were digitized by the Peruvian Ministry of Culture and made available to the public online. Digitally re-configured by the artist, the ‘glitched’ artifacts are presented suspended in an undefined space and time. While they rotate on their axes in a continuous loop, the digital environment’s lighting shifts from dawn to noon to dusk, conveying the passage of time. Glass screens replace museum vitrines, liberating these reimagined artifacts from the confines of museum shelves and private collections.
Romero grants these relics a new materiality and presence; her exploration delves into the narrative potential inherent in them. Investigating how digital archives can influence and reinterpret history, Romero’s work sheds light on a critical observation: the digitization of many pre-Columbian artifacts often reflects a colonizing perspective, erasing their original histories and purposes. Peru has a painful history of artifacts being illegally sold and exported to the global North, where they’ve been stripped of their cultural contexts. By using the atmospheric potential of new technologies, Romero brings back ancient beliefs that have been omitted from historical accounts, and strategically relocates them within narratives about the present and the future. Romero’s work thus serves as a commentary on how digitization can either erase or highlight the rich histories and cultural contexts of these invaluable artifacts, disrupting the historical tendency to exclude Indigenous communities who’ve been marginalized in their own cultural narratives. Through their simultaneously familiar and extraordinary presence, the work hints that what we are witnessing might not be relics of the past, but rather glimpses of a future yet to unfold. In essence, Intangible Totem | Dawn, Dusk, Noontide raises profound inquiries about the intersection of history, cultural narratives, technology, and the power dynamics inherent in digitization.
Rebeca Romero's artistic practice offers a multifaceted exploration of diasporic identity, truth, fiction, and their intricate connections to the digital age. In an era characterized by globalization and digital transformation, Romero's interdisciplinary approach, encompassing sculpture, ceramics, textiles, sound, performance, and video, offers a sensible reflection on the evolving nature of identity and historical narratives. Romero's juxtaposition of Pre-Columbian iconography with 3D scanning and printing technologies challenge temporal boundaries, simultaneously referencing the past and envisioning an alternate future. Her examination of how artifacts can convey stories is especially pertinent in an age where digital archives redefine how history is recorded. By mining online museum archives for data and subsequently recontextualizing and re-presenting it, Romero highlights the shifting dynamics of knowledge dissemination and preservation. Her emphasis on new materialities, collaborative processes and incorporation of AI image generators challenge established notions of intelligence, technology, and authorship.