ABSTRACT
Over the last two decades, a whole generation of artists approach to the past as if they themselves were historians: investigating, working with primary documents and promoting a critical engagement with history. This chapter considers the work of Peruvian artist Fernando Bryce through the prism of this “art of history.” Using a particular work method—which the artist has dubbed “mimetic analysis”—Bryce reflects on the construction of history, geopolitics, identity in Latin America, particularly in Peru, the armed conflicts of the twentieth century or even the validity and genealogy of revolutionary thinking. With an archive-like aesthetics, Bryce selects documents that he subsequently copies in ink on paper in order to construct new readings of history. His selection, de-contextualization, and visualization of past and forgotten stories helps bring the past into the present. And his work method—anachronistically copying documents, performing history, repeating it preposterously—twists time and questions the hegemonic discourses about the past.
