{"id":92376,"date":"2025-04-18T07:26:29","date_gmt":"2025-04-18T14:26:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=92376"},"modified":"2025-04-19T07:44:55","modified_gmt":"2025-04-19T14:44:55","slug":"ernesto-apomaytas-art-across-altitudes-from-machu-picchu-to-the-wasatch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/ernesto-apomaytas-art-across-altitudes-from-machu-picchu-to-the-wasatch\/","title":{"rendered":"Ernesto Apomayta’s Art Across Altitudes: From Machu Picchu to the Wasatch"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"A

“The Great Wall of China” by Ernesto Apomayta-Chambi.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

If a painter was born and raised on a wild and rugged, scenic western mountaintop, near one of the world\u2019s most famous lakes, and he chose through his art to celebrate the landscape and unique people he lived among, then it seems he ought to work in Utah, or at least his images should speak to how Utahns see the world. As it happens, Ernesto Apomayta-Chambi was born in the Inca community of Puno, Peru, and grew up inspired by the legend of nearby Lake Titicaca, the world\u2019s highest navigable lake, which is known both for the evocative ruins that surround it and its floating islands. Yet we find his work here, near Great Salt Lake, at the Utah Community Celebration Center.<\/h4>\n

This is Apomayta-Chambi\u2019s second exhibition at UCCC, and any question of whether Utahns will reciprocate his interest in our state might be answered by response to two landscapes he brings from his many foreign travels. One is the Great Wall of China and the other is the ruined Inca city of Machu Picchu. Both are fabled places, but neither relies solely on history for its appeal. Rather, each is visually unique and spectacular in its own right. The Great Wall, with its promenade on top and steps climbing up and down the remote terrain, is actually a path that connects otherwise isolated stations that invokes the lonely lives of regular soldiers who protected the ordinary people who could live enviable lives behind it. Similarly, Machu Picchu hid its indigenous builders from the conquistadors, men on horseback with weapons and garments of metal who came with the sunrise to despoil and plunder populations defenseless against their technological superiority. All they could do was ascend the mountains and live unseen until they mysteriously melted away.<\/h4>\n