Female self-portraiture and the quest for identity. The gaze of women in 21st century Peruvian art

Abstract

Peruvian feminist art movements emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but it was only in the late 1990s that their presence in the public space was affirmed. Activist artists interrogate, through militant works, the role of women in Peruvian society. Their research on femininity focuses on motherhood or the body as a place of memory and social struggle. In their work, they make extensive use of the practice of self-portraiture, an intimate diary and a place from which to interrogate identities. This article examines the declinations of the self-portrait in five contemporary artists: Teresa Burga, Gloria Gómez Sánchez, Johanna Hamman, Victoria Santa Cruz and Natalia Iguiñiz Boggio.