Mocarro was a derogatory word once used in coastal Ecuador to name the people of La Pila who worked with clay. The term referred to both the person and the object: the artisan and the small ceramic figure shaped by their hands.

Departing from an official inventory of archaeological objects classified as false, pieces produced by La Pila's artisans and dismissed as fakes by institutional authority, this project examines what it means for a museum to classify knowledge as illegitimate. A briefcase holds dozens of miniature ceramic figures. Behind it, a charcoal collage reproduces the same objects in a register of dust and erasure. On the floor, charcoal footprints trace the steps of those mocarros who shaped a past and turned it into the present.

The museum is itinerant. It moves between communities, asking other publics to recognize that the artisan is not derivative of the original but a living archive in its own right.