Wiphala

Climate change is one of the most urgent topics of our times. While world leaders keep meeting to discuss possible solutions to global warming, the collapse of our planet is unfolding. Now more than ever, humankind has come to the collective realization that, unless we rethink our approach to life, we will succumb.

As the clock keeps ticking, the search for new sustainable models has become one of the most defining challenges for living generations. As we transition to a new era, we’re responsible for the choices we make and for the foundations we build for the future of the planet. In developing a new vision, we need to realize that we’re part of something bigger, on which we depend and that depends on us — the latter being the core value within Andean Cosmovision.

Cosmovision is an ancestral philosophy that endures in South America since the pre-Columbian era; by advocating the link between humans to the cosmos, Cosmovision may embed the emphatic key to rethink what we are as a species. In particular, what role we play toward other species and the ecosystem to which we belong.

Through this project, I investigated Cosmovision as a possible source of inspiration for a sustainable future, revealing the region where Cosmovision is embedded in every day’s life and represented by the Andean people’s own official flag: the Wiphala. This iconographical compass was originally created to relate each of the rainbow’s color to the core values within Cosmovision, a sort of bridge between the terrestrial and the spiritual realms that guides Andean society.

Inspired by this concept, I developed WIPHALA, by metaphorically using the Andean emblem as a prism. By using filters of different types and colors through double-exposure, I photographed each subject through one of the Wiphala’s colors. That process allowed me to symbolically connect viewers to the Altiplano, through Cosmovision.