Art and Drama Studies, Utrecht and Amsterdam, the Netherlands School of Fine Arts, Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia 1994 Royal Ueno Museum Prize, Fujisankei Biennale, Japan 1992 Excellent Maquette, Fujisankei Biennale, Japan 1987 Premio Camacho, Lima, Peru Lika Mutal (12 September 1939 – 7 November 2016) was a Dutch-Peruvian sculptor whose career began in 1971.
Mutal’s work is well represented globally, and her practice is based out of Norha Haime Gallery in New York City.
Mutal fell in love with Colombia instantly, and found herself intrigued by the effect that the landscape, which was so different from the flat and grey city scape of the Netherlands, had on the human consciousness.
Because of the language barrier, Mutal’s acting dream was put on hold, so she began to puppeteer in order to continue performing.
[3] Lika Mutal studied at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, Colombia[5] for a short time until she moved with her husband and two children to Lima, Peru in 1968.
At the University, she studied under Anna Maccagno, who taught her to work with traditional materials such as clay, wood, and steel.
Halfway through the degree at the Universidad Catolica, Mutal quit in order to work on her own, and no evidence points to her ever returning.
[6] Before removing the stone, Mutal performs rituals taught to her by incan shamans, which include burnt offerings and sprinkling the ground with wine, asking the Earth for permission.
[8] In addition to being influenced by Mutal’s personal relationship with the stone, some work is inspired by the quipus, a pre-Columbian tool used for recording and mathematics which has never been deciphered.
This simple, inherent mystery revolving the quipus inspired much of Mutal’s early, smaller scaled, work, which has been praised for having a fibrous fluidity.
One aspect of the Peruvian landscape that inspires Mutal is the unexpected duality found in “the confrontation with life and death; beautiful beaches, but carcasses of animals on the beach… at first big an empty, but then charged with subtle energy.
[3] Lika Mutal has recently been awarded the Jose Maria Arguedas Prize for her work El ojo que Llora.
Mutal was commissioned to make a piece of public art in order to commemorate the loss of life as a result of a dispute between the Peruvian government and guerilla that took place in 1980-2000.