Obreras

19.1.2023 0 Like 0 kommenttia

Camila Flores Fernandez’s work was born out of her anthropological research and collective art creation with Afroperuvian women peasant (field) workers of the community of El Carmen, Chincha, Southern coastal Peru. “Obreras” is a work-in-process meant to be an artistic installation composed of spoken words, written words and audiovisual footage. Flores Fernandez is one of the artists-in-residence of Research Pavilion #5.

The project description

The framework of this project is my Master’s thesis research in anthropology and collective art creation. Chincha is the only town in all of Peru where Afroperuvians compose the majority of the population, and where the construction of identity and collective memory of racial segregation and slavery are still alive through the creation of music and poetry. As well, the culture of El Carmen revolves around domestic work, care activities and peasantry, activities fulfilled by women.

The words that compose this installation are poems co-created and narrated by the Afroperuvian women workers, while the footage depicts scenes of the women in their work activities, playing with the intimate worlds of the women and their relations with the land and the collective memory of their community through their peasant work. The spoken and written poetry pieces will be showcased as sounds alone, accompanied with videos and alongside projections of the poems themselves as well. This is still a work-in-process, and as such, the final poetry and visual pieces are still being elaborated, and the composition of the installation in the space will be thought of as the elements come together.

The Research Pavilion theme, “Puzzled Together”, focuses on the ecological crisis and tensions among countries. Peru, the country where I come from and where my installation is composed, is entrenched in different types of political and ecological conflicts that are worth exploring through socially-conscious and collaborative artistic research and production. My project consists on the mix between the poems and footage of Afroperuvian peasant women with which they explore and relate their relationship with their land and environment through their work as peasants, but also as domestic workers and care takers. As well, it also delves on the relationships between their labor and their identity and collective memory of slave field work. The lives, narratives and stories of labor of the women of El Carmen are constantly affected by climate change and socioeconomical tensions regarding the agricultural frontier expansion and economic crises that pushes for the extreme industrialization of peasant work.

Artist-researcher profile

My name is Camila Flores-Fernández, I’m a researcher and emerging visual artist from Lima, Peru. I have a BA in Literature and Linguistics (PUCP, Peru) and a MSc in Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies (KU Leuven, Belgium). My written work focuses on film, literature and arts and its social implications. For this, I’ve been published in indexed magazines, participated in 15 international academic events and received various research grants. As a self-taught visual artist, my work centers around marginalized narratives, gender and social injustice. My first short film has been screened in six international film festivals and received accolades. Currently, I’m based in Belgium working on my new film and research projects.

Camila Flores Fernandez’s Research Pavilion residence will take place in Saari Residence from 16 May to 28 May 2023.