Martin Ayala Chavez (DAE)

Tin Ayala graduated from the Design Academy Eindhoven with his Cholonisation project, that offers a platform to Cholo artists, musicians and performers. In former Spanish colonies of South America, Cholo used to be a derogatory term for people of mixed – indigenous and Spanish – heritage, but it has become a proud sobriquet for people who embrace the eclectic popular urban culture of the Andean states, as Ayala does. During his EKWC residency, he made two series of stirrup spout vessels that reference pre-Columbian ceramics. One consists of two gold-lustred ceremonial jugs representing potatoes and maize; the indigenous American crops that have become staple foods across the world. The second is made up of ten jugs in the forms of various Pokémon, as a critical reflection on the game’s premiss of environmental exploitation.