I'm so happy to share more of the culture of my beautiful country Bolivia with you all. Today is tuesday of carnival, the major feast day of this season!
CARNIVAL in my hometown is a huge deal (and the whole country really) , it represents a lot of things because we are a product of a mix of traditions and cultures of different roots from ancient times but also from modern and all in between. We celebrate life and we thank the Mother Earth for another year of blessings but we also prepare our souls for lent a period of deep reflection and introspection that starts to tomorrow on ash wednesday.
In this time of the year, from ancient traditions we celebrate life basically. We actually celebrate carnival since last thursday with "Comadres" with a ton of parties, the biggest one if the country is in Oruro this past saturday and the last one is in my city with "El Corso de corsos" on this sunday where dancers from all the country celebrate another year of life on this earth.
This tradition unites all bolivian communities from all the corners through friendship, fun and culture.
It's really important because it strengthens social ties (very crucial since the people nowadays are so divided) and preserves the country's ancestral heritage (that we love and that actually unites us) .
It also contributes to teaching about the relationship between nature and people because in my country we have a really strong relationship with the Mother earth that we call Pachamama, so we celebrate this deep conexion paying homage with dances and music.
Pacha=earth, mama=mother
This particular tuesday is called Martes de C'halla, and it's a living testimony to the country's rich cultural heritage and the importance of keeping indigenous customs alive. Most of the people in my country is indigenous and carnival traditions are a legacy of those ancient cultures that lived here.
We have a ton of different traditions to celebrate Carnival because we have a huge different cultures in this country that I'm gonna cover in different future posts but today I want to focus on the mountains with this particular character, the mysterious K'usillo.
This character is present on many different dances, his name means "monkey" in the aymara language, this dancer is present in different dances but in particular in the dance called "Waka waka", he is like a buffon, a jocker , he is the Jester from the andean mountains, a character that embodies all of what the carnival represents, characterized by humor, chaos, fun and the ability to challenge the status quo. He dances jumping around and making fun of people, making parodies, jokes and bothering people in a very spontaneous way and displaying so much energy that is contagious and so much fun to see.
In these videos you can find how they move:
https://youtube.com/shorts/YdS2UdkuTWQ?si=UAkBPKXD_T3PBImc
In this short you can see how many different types of k'usillos there are:
https://youtube.com/shorts/axg6T5B1u_w?si=6Lvp5pWyfgkgkB7E
This is the most popular song in Bolivia to dance like a K'usillo
That's what I wanted to capture in this artwork. And I was digging into some videos, and I found so many info about this character that I find interesting, for example his mask has three horns sometimes more, a sarcastic smile and a nose that's pointy and represents fertility. He is very mysterious and he brings luck because he is connected with the higher spiritual realms and also the deep more dark realms of the mountains. He is like a mythical figure walking between both worlds the light and the dark.
I found even a tutorial on how to dance like this character from a teacher of a school, that's actually where I got my references from, this is the video where I took some screenshots to get the references since I didn't found much interesting photos to be inspired by, this is the video on how to move to dance to that fun joker style:
Process
After I took the screenshots I decided to use three poses to show movement and the energy of the Kusillo, first I made these two:
The original costume was orange, but I couldn't just make one, because the colors of bolivian dances are so fun, that I wanted to capture more...so I find this video of a yellow one if this video:
https://youtube.com/shorts/e6BX7utdm2s?si=TyHsHkdkSJqW13-O
This was the result:
After that I put some color to the orange kusillo...
Then I made another Kusillo with blue, making reference from the viddo of the teacher dancing with a little mini-kusillo:
So I draw 3 kusillos:
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The I wanted to capture even more colors and the fun movement of this characters so I put some back ground colors with contrast inspired by carnival and the party vibes,inspired by "cerpendinas", that are papers we put on houses and parties to celebrate carnival.
So I finally made the 3 kusillos vibing to the sound of music each one in his own way...
This is the final artwork:
And with the Hagrid filter:
And that was it...this artwork was finally done, let me tell you this work of art was so exciting to make because the more I was diving into the history about it to get references the more I learned about my own culture, my beautiful heritage and fell even more in love with my roots. It's fascinating!
This character was very enlighting to me because I learned by how fun this character is that we have to take life more lightly, focus on finding humor in different situations, and just don't rake life so seriously because we aren't getting away alive anyways!
So we better take it easy!
This philosophy was so refreshing for me because we are bombarded with so many negativity in this world and particularly in my country where we are going through a crisis ik every aspect of our lives, this kusillo take on life, is very much needed and appreciate it!
I feel like this character changed my life for the better, in a way and I'm so thankful for that. That's what I love about art, capturing the esence of life is not only uplifting but it makes us a better person touching our souls with the magic that is the beauty of existence.
Thank you for being a part of this journey with me, and until next time with more art!
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