On July 9th, we met at the
Museo del Carmen Alto
with its community mediator: Andrés Rueda shares with us the work he has been doing in a peculiar museum institution, given that its exhibition space coexists with the residence of the Carmelite congregation; this has made them co-curators of the museum’s exhibitions, activities, and pedagogical content as a condition for its opening 4 years ago in the convent.
All the museum’s contents have been worked on with them, and as a result, the permanent exhibition is divided into three blocks, one about the life of Mariana de Jesús, a blessed woman consecrated to the life of contemplation, another dedicated to the daily life of the Sisters of Carmen Alto, and a third dedicated to religious art with anonymous productions from the 18th century and works by authors close to the order.
In this peculiar framework, the mediation work has revolved around the public space, focusing on a process with merchants in the area and on the activation of the Santa Clara square located in the San Marcos neighborhood, in the historical center of Quito; this activation process was developed between January and April 2014 in collaboration with the
La Karakola
collective, a house for experimentation and artistic coexistence, in a context of remodeling the historical center of the city that seems to point to the well-known processes of gentrification, homogenization, and real estate speculation.
As a result of networking with the other museums of the
Fundación Museos de la Ciudad
, the Yarikcillo proposal arises, driven by a group of young people who, after completing some summer workshops offered by the museum, organized themselves and proposed to recover an alternative path to reach the statue of the Virgin of Quito on the hill of
Panecillo
, an icon of the city whose name in Kichua is Shungoloma, or also Yavirak (precisely, Yarikcillo merges the original name of the place ‘Yavirak’ with the current ‘El Panecillo’).
They have been working on this process for nearly a year with the support in specific events from the neighborhood leaders of the Comunidad 5 de julio, who are interested in involving the youngest members in the social life of the neighborhood, and with the accompaniment of the museum’s educators.
The recovery of the path is based on the exploration of its natural and social environment, on the research and recognition of its ecosystems, as well as the cosmovision and memory inscribed in this unique territory full of meanings. A research work that translates into the organization of group tours along the path.
On Thursday, July 17th, we met again with two members of the youth group and with the museum’s mediators, and we proposed that they draw us a map-diagram-timeline to understand what the evolution of the collective and the project had been during its first year of existence. During the conversation, the idea arose of using the growth of a plant throughout the cycle of the seasons as a metaphor for the collective and its trajectory, as well as the possibility of using this image in the poster for the anniversary party that they will celebrate next Sunday, July 26th, and which we hope to be able to attend.