“Atavios”
El Trasvestismo Cultural en la Fotografia de Reynaldo Luza. Co Curated with Gustavo Buntinx.
Reynaldo Luza, Tina Modotti, Edward Weston, Abraham Valdelomar, Miguel Covarrubias.
Centro Cultural de la Municipalidad de San Isidro, Lima, Peru
September 2017 -October 2017
This exhibition centres on the compelling visual work of Peruvian artist Reynaldo Luza, whose photographs exceeds mere representation to engage deeply with the concept of cultural travestism — the layering, mixing and transformation of identity, costume and social role. Through elegant and striking sequences of portraits, the show explores how Luza uses dress, pose and architecture to question the boundaries of identity in Peru’s mestizo, Andean and cosmopolitan contexts.
The photographs are organised into thematic series that juxtapose categories each a facet of Peruvian identity, revisited via Luza’s keen attention to costume, surface and subversion.
In staging these images, the exhibition invites viewers to consider the photograph not simply as a record of tradition, but as a space of transformation — where the indigenous, the colonial, the urban and the fashionable entangle. Light and shadow, setting and model, costume and architecture all come together in a visual strategy that reveals “something hidden, not-evident” within our cultural and visual imaginary.
By presenting Luza’s work through the lens of travestism — understood here as both disguise and transformation, assimilation and resistance — this exhibition offers a fresh view on how photography can unravel layered identities and social conventions, re-imagine national imaginaries and connect local visual cultures to broader international dialogues.
