“The Inka’s remembered rocks, in contrast, were perceived as the embodiments of things or ideas. They were “presentations” rather than “representations” and were not substitutive.”

Carolyn Dean, “The Culture of Stone”

In “The Culture of Stone”, Carolyn Dean writes about the significance of stone in Inca culture. Stones were considered sacred not stand-ins for deities, individuals or the past. While the Inkans expanded their empire Northward they stopped in what is known today as Ecuador. There, they found the Cañari, an indigenous group native to the area. With Cañari labor they built Ingapirca, the most important Inca archaeological site in Ecuador. Like Machu Picchu, the site is made up of carefully carved stones that are positioned tightly next to one another without mortar. The process, which is laborious, can be likened to putting a jigsaw puzzle together—every stone fits neatly in its place. 

Over the past three years, I have been photographing Inka stones at Ingapirca with a large format camera. My repeated visits to Ingapirca have led to many conversations with local residents from the Cañar province. It is striking how they speak of their indigenous roots. They view the Incas as colonizers, who enslaved them and invaded their lands for 70 years. Instead, they identify with their Cañari ancestry. 

Rumi builds upon these conversations and research to photographically explore the relationship between the Inka and Cañari. The archeological record shows that while the Inka imposed their culture and architecture on the Cañari and other indigenous groups, they also co-existed with them. Inka structures sit side by side Cañari ones. While their relationship was not a partnership, Inka expansion, though violent, did not result in genocide of indigenous peoples as the Spanish conquest did.

In this series of collages I have recently completed, Cañari stones, organic in shape, are juxtaposed with Inka carved stones in playful geometric compositions. The color blocks in my collages are juxtaposed with the texture and realism of the cut-out photographs of the stones suggesting, through abstraction, the tension between the two cultures and the complexities of how their history is perceived.