Artist of spheres, seas, and arrested time.

• Author: Kenna, Gail
• Position: Carlos Runcie-Tanaka - Interview - Biography

The home of Peruvian potter, sculptor, and installation artist Carlos Runcie-Tanaka announces, upon first sight, the vocation of the person who lives there: Clusters of flaming orange flowers, the color like a refiner's fire, spill down the outer walls of his residence, greeting the visitor. The artist calls the wildly growing evergreen vine lluvia de oro, golden rain. In the foyer, a huge mouth and wide-open eyes on the far wall beckon. As in art museums, there is too much to take in, even in the entrance. Beneath the huge canvas (an artist friend's self-portrait) is a hummingbird in a glass case. Runcie-Tanaka tells the story of that small bird. Often it visited him, until one day when it appeared to be sleeping or nesting in the upper tight-hand corner of the painting. Days passed, and the bird didn't move. Realizing it was dead, he gave the hummingbird a life in memory, placing it inside a glass case filled with the large, flat, feathery seeds from the fruit of the climbing plant stephanotis, which has white flowers and a lovely fragrance. The artist's agent was less than enthusiastic about this latest venture. But the bird wasn't for sale, and lives--still, in the territory of a man who makes compelling objects and tells equally compelling tales.

If art is metaphorical affirmation of territory--an expression of the people who live there--then Runcie-Tanaka's Lima home in the Surco district is a permanent exhibition of one artist's territory. His home shelters the remains of installations that the artist has given the art world since 1977, when he left behind his university studies in philosophy and turned to art. "When I'm producing installations, I think of environments ... places where people can get in and wander around, in order to know more about themselves," he says.

"Energy is eternal delight," said the poet William Blake. But what happens to artistic energy within the confines of our post 9-11 world? In 2002, returning to Peru after the fall semester at Alfred University in New York, where he had been visiting professor of ceramics, Runcie-Tanaka faced a delay in his connecting flight to Lima. That's when he began making his origami crabs: eight legs, two pinchers, and the important thing--two eyes. By folding the paper, he folds memory and time. That day in the Miami airport, making small versions of his crab, he began moving from place to place. Was it his shaved head, the distinct facial blend of East and West, or the tiny white origami crabs that he left on chairs? Something alerted security agents. However, a lovely irony was lost on those who questioned Runcie-Tanaka that day: In December 1996, when the revolutionary group Tupac Amaru seized the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima, he was one of the hostages.

In May 2002, the U.S. embassy in Lima hosted a...