Inside Abstraction: Interpreting Inka Visual Culture

"Why did the Inka, especially in their most prominent examples of visual culture--elite garments, vessels at imperial feasts, public stonework--prefer abstract designs? Carolyn Dean argues that what may appear to be "abstract" is actually something else, something beyond abstract. Inka designs, Dean believes, were demonstrations of proper relationships, informed by context, and imbued with agency such that the viewer is invited to participate: "The geometric forms experience the relationships they model. In so doing the geometric configuration itself is a teacher alongside agentic materials and the self-revelatory process of creation....Once the category of 'teacher' is opened to include geometric configurations, we see how they could model actions. Nevertheless, viewers must do for themselves. The Inka state carefully choreographed the contexts of viewing so as to encourage imperial subjects to think through and within design, locating themselves within networks of relationships on multiple scales. In this way, non-objective configurations served the Inka's imperial goals dependent on an acceptance of, and submission to, Inka order." It's important to understand that relationships and ideas reflected in the designs are not, Dean suggests, narrowly static but rather open-ended.