UCLA

This dissertation research addresses issues of authorship and agency in the art of Wari, the first Andean empire (600-1000 C.E., present-day Peru). Wari art, too often reduced in scholarship to an anonymous and state-serving craft, encompasses a wide range of representational strategies, techniques, and design elements which attests to the creativity of its diverse artists. In this dissertation, I analyze Wari objects in multiple media, such as ceramic, textile, and wood, to gain insights into the processes of artists and their relationship to the state. As such, my research challenges the longstanding framework which privileges the idea of a systematic and centralized Wari state, and questions the emphasis put on the collective in Indigenous artistic production. Through an in-depth examination of two collections of decorated ceramics from two major Wari settlements, Conchopata and Cerro Ba�l, as well as cross-media investigations, this research intends to raise questions and reassess preconceived ideas about imperial art and Indigenous production while beginning to uncover Wari visual language. This analysis will thus be vastly non-exhaustive and intends to keep expanding in the future, hopefully collaboratively. While benefitting from the tremendous research conducted in the social sciences by previous scholars, I embrace here methodological principles that draw from art history as well as Indigenous studies to demonstrate that it is possible to gain a more refined and nuanced understanding of the Wari Empire through the creative process of its artists, beyond narratives of domination, violence, and repetition.