Andrés Pereira Paz

Juan III (Pescadores En Una Isla)

Juan III (Pescadores En Una Isla) is a series of embroideries made with fake pre-Columbian fabrics produced by the Gonzales family, a three-generation family of pre-Columbian textile “forgers” based in Lima, Peru. The members of this family (grandfather, father, and son) all bear the name of Juan and make replicas by hand using traditional methods nearly indistinguishable from the pieces made thousands of years ago. 

A forgery pretends to be something it is not, but the Gonzalez family’s textiles openly intend to recreate those discovered in the 1920s at a necropolis in Peru. The Paracas Necropolis was heavily looted in the 1930s, and textiles began to appear on the international market within a decade The majority of Paracas textiles in international collections are believed to have been smuggled out of Peru at this time. In the period 200–300 BCE, the necropolis housed 420 mummified bodies wrapped in embroidered textiles. South Americans created these textiles over a thousand years before the Incas. They are brightly colored and depict images of supernatural beings or shamans who use their hands to hold severed human heads while flying like birds. 

The fabric’s story offers a discussion on trafficking culture, the absence of art-historical scholarship on cultural materials, in particular, the average knowledge of Andean culture before the Inca, and the questionable difference between fakes and forgeries from the real across the Americas. Tourists, collectors, museums wanted the ancient Americas, so locals made the ancient Americas, making fakes a feature of the pre-Columbian antiquities market since there’s been a pre-Columbian antiquities market. One could argue the textiles made by the Gonzales family contribute to preserving and revive the cultural heritage, long history, and soul of Paracas. This series of pieces serve as a tribute to them and this history.