Aeron Bergman and Alejandra Salinas present a billboard work in Plaza de los Estudiantes, which shows a photograph taken in Cochabamba of agricultural crops in the foreground and mountains in the background, painted with ink.

The veneration of mountains is central to the cosmology of Andean societies. These protective spirits provide snow water from their peaks, nourish the rivers, and irrigate the fields. The photograph, made in collaboration with Bolivian photographer Wilder Córdova and taken in the El Abra Zone, shows an ancestral tree with medicinal powers such as the Molle and colonial crops such as Alfalfa, with the San Pedro Mountains in the background.

Bergman and Salinas study the human relationship with agriculture, and the relationship between humans and the natural world. Their interdisciplinary work takes different forms, for example, they have experimented with making ink with different plants. In the painting on this fence, ink is used in an ambiguous way that hints at both destruction and creation, evoking the invisible human hand that causes the collapse of ecosystems, and also the power of traditional wisdom in collaboration with science to foster creative regeneration.

The ink is made from soot: burnt vegetation. It is thus a symbol of climate change in terms of forest fires and CO2 emissions. At the same time, ink is also a possible symbol of creation, communication, and sustainability. In his poetic intervention, the union of ink, photo, and its location in the Plaza de los Estudiantes opens connections and dialogues.

*Fernando Garcés V. and Walter Sánchez C. ANDEAN Writing. Pictography and ideography on leather, paper and clay. Universidad Mayor de San Simón, Institute of Anthropological Research and Archaeological Museum. Series: INIAM-UMSS Collections “Qhapaj llawarninta”, ‘Of great value’ page 24, fig. 30.