Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, Indigenous and Mestizo artists in what would become Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia created among the era’s most evocative artwork. From baroque-style angels to the Virgin Mary emerging from mountains, Andean colonial art birthed a unique Native style. Yet, these artists have rarely been credited for their work: in museums, one often finds that these paintings are attributed to anonymous artists.
This condition of anonymity affects Andean migrants in the United States today as well, a group composed primarily of Indigenous and Mestizo peoples who work the same conditions of labor, be it in construction, restaurant work, housekeeping, farming, etc. Latin American labor and consumption are so essential to the U.S. economy that they contribute $4.1 trillion to the GDP as of 2023, yet many remain anonymous. What voice emerges when these two histories unite?
The art exhibition La Voz del Anonimato (The Voice of Anonymity) by Layqa Nuna Yawar seeks to unite these two histories of anonymity into a unified tradition of Andean resistance. As he asks in the description of his exhibition: “What would his contemporary canon and culture look like without this colonial erasure?” Based in Newark, NJ, around the Andean communities of the Tri-State area, the exhibition seeks to create a dignified depiction of members of the Andean diaspora in 21st-century colonialism.
Lenny Correa, under his Kichwa moniker Layqa Nuna Yawar or ‘Witch Spirit Blood,’ is a painter born in Cuenca, Ecuador, and based in the United States. His exhibition is in collaboration with Project For Empty Space, a NY-NJ arts organization that brings visibility to marginalized painters— from Queer, Black, Arab, Latin American communities—to the public. Layqa identifies as runa—the Kichwa word for person—as both an identification with Native people and a criticism of mestizaje, a colonial process of whitening marked by an identification with European culture.
Based in Newark, NJ, around the Andean communities of the Tri-State area, the exhibition seeks to create a dignified depiction of members of the Andean diaspora in 21st-century colonialism.
Various inspirations arise in his work. The first is the Ecuadorian artist Camilo Egas, who shifted Costumbrista art towards Indigenismo to depict Indigenous life and then criticize their condition of exploitation under the Ecuadorian Republic. The second is El Maestro de Calamarca, a 17th-18th-century anonymous artist from Bolivia who painted the famed Baroque-style angels in the church at Aroma, La Paz. These angels, painted with aristocratic clothing and holding firearms of the era, show that figures as eternal as angels can appear quite contemporary.
Layqa’s work also deeply follows Andean philosophy, or, as the Cusqueñan scholar Angel Avendaño named it, pachasofía. A portmanteau of the Quechua-Aymara term pacha—meaning earth, space-time, world—and the Greek term Sophia—meaning wisdom—Pachasofía comes to signify “Earth Wisdom” or “Pacha Wisdom.” In many regards, Layqa’s work represents a pachasofic aesthetics bridging together land and people, allpa and runa. His pachasofía is historicized. It is part of a wider tradition of theorists, activists, and artists in which he not only speaks, but the local and diasporic figures in his portraits now play center stage. As such, various Andean concepts emerge throughout his artwork, though four are of particular importance, much like the four parts of Tawantinsuyu. They are yanantinkuy (Complementarity-Encounter), minga (collective work), allpa kamasqa (animated earth), and the Prophecy of the Eagle and Condor.
Yanantinkuy
The piece Yanantinkuy, or a Framework of Sameness, makes reference to metaphysical principles foundational to pachasofía. Yanantinkuy is a portmanteau of the Quechua terms Yanantin (‘with-partner’, complementarity) and Tinkuy (‘encounter’) coined by the Puquina philosopher Javier Lajo. The metaphysics of the Andean world has opposites in a perpetual process of harmonization, not superiority. This, says Lajo, is the secret to creating life. Be it left-right, dark-light, stillness-movement, space-time, etc., these opposites are yana or partners who come into constant contact or tinkuy that, rather than seek to overpower the other, they are always in search of a harmony with one another.
In Layqa’s piece, one is confronted by the harmony between humans and the mountain, complementing each other but not losing their differences. As such, a very human face emerges from the volcano’s core without definite borders between human and stone. The swirling layers of white and red in the painting point to the complementary role those colors play in Andean aesthetics. The confluence of nature and humanity, eagle and condor, immigrant and Indigenous, life and death, all appear as aspects of this yanantin-tinkuy process present in this nascent diasporic tradition.
Minga
One of the most significant themes is that of minga, a term that evokes the concept of protest. From the Kichwa word meaning “to invite,” minga is an invitation to communal farm labor done in times of planting and harvesting. The Indigenous movement also uses it as an invitation to protest for Indigenous rights, land, and resources. From collective survival to collective protest, minga is found in Layqa’s art.
An evocative theme that emerges is what the scholar George Ygarza describes as the Andean Radical Tradition, the tradition of revolutionary thinkers and political figures that appear in the Andean world. In his series Living Figures of Indigenous Resistance, Layqa centers four Andean figures of radical change: Dolores Cacuango, Tránsito Amaguaña, Fernando Daquilema, and José Carlos Mariátegui; the first three from Ecuador and the last from Peru. All were fighters for Indigenous land; all—excluding Daquilema—were socialists engaged with Indigenismo; and Cacuango and Mariátegui were both philosophers. Cacuango is known for her famous myth of “the highland grass,” while Mariátegui fused myth into Andean socialism.
Debates over anonymity and personhood are essential for understanding how Latin American art defines itself.. The Indigenista artist David Álfaro Siqueiros criticized his fellow muralist Diego Rivera for focusing on Aztec life over contemporary Native demands. Indigenous ruins preferred over Indigenous people. As his criticism, Siqueiros painted Etnografía (1939), showing an Indigenous Totonac man with his face covered by a stone-like Olmec mask. Layqa’s process follows a radical stream begun since indigenista art that depicts, dignifies, and amplifies the voices of the people who make the minga happen, rather than a disembodied aesthetic devoid of Andean runa.
Allpa Kamasqa
A deeper ontological question can be asked: What is runa, humanity? Andeans would answer: allpa kamasqa, ’animated earth.’ Recorded by El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega in his Royal Commentaries on the Incas (1607/19), he explains how the amawtas—wise ones—noticed that the decomposed body returns to being earth after death. Thus, human life was itself allpa kamsqa or ‘animated earth.’ The inverse is also true. Andean people see the mountain as living beings with human faces and limbs emerging from their stone. At Machu Picchu, two other mountains stand behind the famed citadel, Huayna Picchu and Huchuy Picchu. Cusqueñans say that from their outlines emerge the face of a giant man.
In Coordinates of Belonging, Laqya returns to the Andean tradition of humanizing the mountains. He paints a human body overlaying the mountain of Palcaraju in Ancash, Peru. The human figure is lying on its back in a weak state, seemingly dying. This image aligns with the state of Palcaraju as its snowcap glacier rapidly melts due to climate change, bringing it onto the path of extinction, while also endangering the people of Huaraz, the capital city of Ancash. As such, the mountain’s health is community health, bringing into view that the health of nature is essential to the existence of humanity on this earth.
Eagle and Condor
Core to Andean Philosophy is prophecy, and one is particularly significant for the diaspora: the Myth of the Eagle and Condor. The prophecy was released by Kichwa elders in Ecuador in 1990. It speaks of a time when the eagle, representing Natives from North America, and the condor, for Natives from South America, would one day fly together to initiate the pachakuti, the overturning of the colonial order. Prophesied 500 years ago, it is said that this is the era when the eagle and condor would meet.
This prophecy is embodied in his piece The Myth of the Eagle and Condor, after “Letiel Dei.” An Andean-Arab immigrant stands as the arquebusier angel from the Master of Calamarca’s painting. This 21st-century angel has one eagle wing and one condor wing, embodying the prophecy as diasporic Andean peoples live on northern Native lands in solidarity with their struggles. These opposites meet together to create, through yanantin-tinkuy, a harmony of a united Andean people ready to live the pachakuti.
True to its mission, the opening day of La Voz del Anonimato was a community celebration. Amauta–an Ecuadorian music group–was invited to perform Andean music for the invitees, as Ecuadorians, Peruvians, Bolivians, and many others came together to clap, sing, and dance in a circle, as is common across the Andes. Layqa Nuna Yawar situates his art in an Indigenous legacy that fuses art, politics, and pachasofía to create community in a shared tradition beyond national borders. It is a diasporic art that truly meets the transnational sense of the word Andean. This exhibition closes on January 16, 2026.
Arnold Arnez is a Quechua-Aymara Bolivian scholar, born in the United States. His work centers on a hemispheric Indigenous history across North and Latin America, and Inkan-Andean philosophy. He is currently a research fellow at the Vartan Gregorian Center for Research in the Humanities in the New York Public Library.