Figure c. 4000

This small stone figure, made by the Valdivia people, has a real presence and is a really beautiful object. It feels like a conversation across time! I can imagine the artist carefully carving away at the stone, feeling its weight and texture, figuring out how to make it speak. The Valdivia artist has really thought about the relationship between positive and negative space. Look at the blocky eyes and how they’re cut into the stone, or the three vertical bars that form the body. They’re almost like columns of some kind. I wonder what was going through their head when they made it? What did this figure mean to them and their community? It feels very modern to me – in its abstraction, almost like something you might see from the cubist period. It makes me consider how artists have always been inspired by one another across time, constantly exchanging ideas and ways of seeing.