In Horamen, Adrián Balseca traces transformations and mutations in relation to pre-Colombian goldsmith work. The central element in the work is the crucible, a millenary instrument of clay and graphite that was used by the ancestral cultures of the Ecuadorian territory, and which is still used as a tool for artisanal foundry. Balseca uses the crucibles to create sculptural constellations that suggest a geographic cartography – that of the original location of the La Tolita-Tumaco culture (600 a.C.–400 d.C.), a region renown for its formal and technical innovation in metallurgy. Also a political and financial cartography: that of extractivism, which begun more than 500 years ago with the arrival of the Spanish and continues in the present. Balseca explores the dynamics that surround the metal pieces, their exchanges, territories and displacements, and its moments of resymbolisation – for example the adoption of the Golden Sun of Tolita as the emblem of the Banco Central of Ecuador.
Balseca’s recent practice explores the relationship and tension between industrial and artisanal production. It focuses on historical process, and on how certain technologies, objects, artifacts, goods or materials capture social, cultural or political transformations.