Peruvian Artist questioned Hispanic discourse and was censored; she now represents Spain at the Venice Biennale

The life turns around. In September 2021, hours before the inauguration, the Minister of Culture of the Community of Madrid, linked to the management of the Popular Party, censored the text of the exhibition “Good Government”, by the Peruvian artist Sandra Gamarra curated by Agustín Pérez Rubio. With a remarkable set of paintings, the painter questioned how Spain interpreted its role as a colonial empire in the past, and conservative officials questioned terms such as “racism”, “conflict”, “neocolonial” or “restitution”. The impasse generated a scandal among the Madrid art union, critical of the idea of ​​“Hispanicity” promoted by Mayor Isabel Ayuso, known for her disdainful phrases against indigenous American peoples.

A year and a half later, last April, Gamarra was chosen to represent the Spanish pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale. Born in Lima in 1972, to a Peruvian father and a mother of Japanese origin, her work seems “painted” for the curatorial approach by the Brazilian Adriano Pedrosa, curator of the 60th edition of the International Art Exhibition in the city of canals, which proposes a biennial focused on foreign artists, immigrants, expatriates, emigrants, exiles and refugees, whose works express differences and disparities conditioned by identity, nationality, race, gender or freedom.

According to the Valencian curator Pérez Rubio, who was in our country invited by the Lima Art Museum, the noise generated by the censorship in “Buen Gobierno” caused greater media and public attention. “They found a Peruvian artist who has been in Madrid for many years, with a work of enormous formal, discursive and installation power”says Pérez Rubio, proud of the result of that exhibition.

For his work in Venice, Gamarra once again trusts his curator. The project is titled “Migrant Pinacoteca”, and although it will only be shown to the press in detail next February, it is known that the artist will focus on how the history of Spanish painting offers clues about historical coloniality. “We are going to work on the idea of ​​an art gallery that migrates, from the works themselves to human migration, including the policies of the Spanish government towards the heritage from America.”Advances Pérez Rubio.

By censoring Sandra Gamarra, the Madrid city council caused the opposite effect: more attention to an artist who combats Hispanic discourse.

Sandra Gamarra is currently dedicated to workshop work, painting the large-format paintings that will hang in the pavilion that Spain has in the Giardini in Venice. In a telephone conversation, she reflects on censorship and her subsequent selection and recognizes how important Adriano Pedrosa’s criteria have been to represent Spain. “I imagine that my participation is possible precisely because of your call. I like to think that I occupy a place between being and not being. In a time of such polarization as the one we live in, creating an intermediate place is problematic, you make enemies between the two sides in conflict.”says the artist, who recognizes that the unrest created with “Good Government” gave greater visibility to her work. “I have been working in Spain for a long time and my work, I suppose due to the maturity of my process, has achieved a certain visibility”he points out.

Based on some of the proposals from the “Good Government” exhibition, the exhibition of the Peruvian painter in Venice is made up of six spaces, which will exhibit images whose original source are works that are part of Spanish collections, currently kept in warehouses of different institutions. . “What I do is collect them and see what they generate when the images are put together”, explains Gamarra. And his curator adds: “We are going to talk about painting in a broad sense, but also about the narrative line of Spanish history. Iconographies, themes, ways of representing what we today assume as racism, patriarchy or Eurocentrism. In a holistic way, the exhibition will make us see that issues such as the climate crisis, femicides, racism or coloniality are totally intertwined”Add

Fear of the concept

Why does talking about the “neocolonial” generate so much nervousness in the most conservative sectors of the peninsula? For Pérez Rubio, what happens is that Spain has not allowed itself to reflect in depth to heal its historical processes. “Eurocentrism has to do with a historical relationship starting with the conquest of America. With the beginning of a capitalist system and its relationship with monarchies, commercial networks and networks of exploitation of people and raw materials. From then on, there is no European country that has not had former colonies, and that has not benefited from this colonial process.”Explain

As the artist herself states, a discourse that endorses the benefits of the conquest is installed in a cultural and symbolic hierarchy. “They are those who say that, although there may have been atrocities in the conquest processes, above that there are the cultural benefits that Spain’s “contact” with other cultures produced. But when that supremacy is questioned, that discourse falls. That is why it is so problematic to talk about decolonialism.”

“The same thing happened under Franco”adds Pérez Rubio. “We went from a dictatorial regime to a democratic rearrangement of the ruling classes. No one went to jail nor were any trials opened. I’m not telling you what happened 500 years before. It seems that if you mess with that story, you are “staining” Spain.”laments the curator.