Kallawaya. The Art of Healing in the Andes

On approximately 470m², exhibits are shown from the comprehensive and unique collection of Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Ina Rösing, Universitätsklinikum Ulm/ Institute for Cultural Anthropology, who lived among the Kallawaya for many years and who researched their healing culture extensively. For more than 20 years, Rösing researched aspects of the Kallawaya healing culture from a social scientific and psychotherapeutic point of view.

Objects mainly include ritual ingredients and props of the different healing types as well as a large variety of amulets for all areas of life in the Andes. Also a variety of traditional textiles (bags, scarves, belts and head bands), which are of high quality and due to their rich symbolism show rituals and Andean religion, are exhibited. Rösing's images in the form of slides, which are an excellent visual complement to the detailed description of healing, persons, habitats and everyday practises, comprehensively document many individual and collective healing up close with the respected distance to the patient. Most of the objects and images date back to the 1980s and the early 1990s.

In the special exhibition, the collection Rösing is enriched by a small fraction of the private collection of Dr. Ernst J. Fischer, who, as a physician, dealt with aspects of illness and healing by the means of pre-Columbian ceramics from Peru. The figures sensitively depict classic symptoms of disease and human suffering. Additional loans in the form of herbariums, which are complementing our objects, have been provided by the Institute of Botany, Universität Leipzig.

Visitors of all ages will become acquainted with the cultural uniqueness through special tours and events. The lecture series “Die Künste des Heilens – Fremdes und Eigenes” (The Arts of Healing – Familiar and Unfamiliar) complements the supporting program of the exhibition.