Peruvian sculptor Blas Isasi creates sculptures in a wide range of materials and colors informed by ancient Andean cosmology and the landscape of the Peruvian desert. This free exhibition at the Saint Louis Art Museum focuses on the violent meeting between two radically different world views – those of the Indigenous Andeans and those of the colonizing Europeans – in early 16th-century Peru.

Currents 125 offers a meditated interrogation of Peru’s complex and layered history. Isasi does not romanticize Andean culture but rather suggests that it might offer alternative models for a troubled present.

The exhibition’s central installation consists of two large, angular steel sculptures animated by rocklike shapes coated with sand; carved bones with hair extensions; and small, highly detailed and colorful forms. The installation embodies the cultural hybridity resulting from the encounter between Andean and European cultures. The presence of hair and bone, with their sacred meanings in Andean culture, suggests that objects can be vessels for spirits.

The second space features a Chincha Inka balance from the Saint Louis Art Museum’s collection, which was used to weigh objects in a pre-Hispanic barter economy. It is surrounded by sandstone sculptures with aluminum foil pieces, which resemble Andean metal artifacts and, again, suggest a spiritual presence. Across the gallery is another scale with mutilated aluminum fingers on one side, embodying colonial violence, and a balancing weight of one kilogram on the other, referencing the metric system as an archetypal symbol of science in Western Enlightenment.