Andean artist Antonio Paucar wins Artes Mundi prize in Wales | Art

An artist and beekeeper from a remote corner of the Andes has won one of the UK’s most prestigious contemporary art awards and plans to spend the £40,000 prize on building a cultural center in the Peruvian mountains.

Antonio Paucar The winner of the biennial was announced Artes Mundi award After presenting works ranging from a spiral made of alpaca wool to a video of a poem he wrote with his own blood about the environmental crisis facing his region while sitting at a table high in the mountains.

The aim of the Artes Mundi prize, based in Wales, is to highlight the work of talented but largely unknown artists from around the world and distribute their works across the country. The works of the six artists are exhibited in five galleries across Wales.

Speaking to the Guardian in Cardiff before the awards ceremony, Paucar said: “I did not expect this. The journey of an artist is very challenging. For me, this kind of recognition is very important for my region, my country, my culture. It gives me the strength to continue developing new projects.”

Paucar comes from the village of Aza, near Huancayo in the Junín region of central Peru, where his family made traditional figures and masks. He worked as a beekeeper in the highlands of Peru before going to Berlin to study art.

He now divides his time between making art and tending to bees, aiming to highlight environmental issues and help preserve his culture and language. “I have a rural life: we raise chickens and grow vegetables,” he said.

Among Paucar’s exhibited works: National Museum Cardiff La Energía Espiral del Ayni is a spiral made of black and white alpaca wool.

Paucar said: “Same It is a Quechua word. It represents a concept unique to the Andes, a way of thinking, the idea that everything is connected. It allowed people in the Andes to maintain balance with nature. If the mountains give us food and life, we must give them life too. Life is not linear like the European way of thinking. It is not possible for us to be born here and die here. We are circular.”

When Paucar collected alpaca wool from the mountains, he was surprised at how difficult it was to find black wool. “I thought it was important to have black and white wool. It was easy to find white wool because there is a demand for white in the textile industry because it can be dyed. The black color is disappearing.”

Another work, El Corazón de la Montaña, includes a video of Paucar sitting at a table in the mountains and writing with blood taken from his body. His message draws attention to the climate and pollution crisis: “The glaciers of the Andes are crying/ Melting forever with their mournful cries.”

One of his pieces, exhibited at Llandudno, Mostyn, in North Wales, bears traces of Paucar’s footprints on the wall. She walked barefoot on the nearby limestone cape Y Gogarth (Great Orme) and then did a handstand in the gallery. His feet flattened against the wall, leaving a ghostly mark.

Paucar said he sees parallels between Peru and Wales. “Celtic culture was very connected to nature. It’s the same with Andean culture. In Wales and where I come from, preserving the language is also important.”

Not all of his work has been universally well received. The Guardian’s art writer Jonathan Jones was not a fan of the video shown at Mostyn of Paucar burying and burning a reproduction of Marcel Duchamp’s 1913 artwork The Bicycle Wheel.

Jones wrote: “A performance attacking an icon of Western art makes sense only to those who know the subject.” Paucar said that he respected Duchamp and that the work referred to the wheel he played with in his childhood.

Nigel Prince, director of Artes Mundi, said up to 150,000 people were expected to see works by Paucar and other artists by the time the exhibition ended.

Prince said it was positive that parallels were emerging between Celtic Western Europe and the Peruvian Andes. “We’re really interested in focusing on the things that bring people together,” he said. “In today’s global context, where there can often be a focus on difference as a means of division and fragmentation, I think this actually leads to a form of sharing and dialogue.”