The exhibits “El Cusco de Martín Chambi” (Cusco 2014) and “Antes de la tormenta: Baldomero Alejos” (Ayacucho 2019) were held in the streets of two largely Indigenous Andean cities that could not be more different. Both photographers were Indigenous, but while Chambi is renowned worldwide for his spectacular archive, Baldomero Alejos seldom left his studio, yet he documented the rise of the Shining Path in Ayacucho. Not altogether unexpectedly, the reception of these exhibits reflected the deep divides in the cities; and while celebrated in Cusco, the public and state’s reception of the exhibit in Ayacucho was fraught.
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SILVIA SPITTA'S research centers on Latin American and Latinx material and visual culture, border culture, photography, and archives. In the past years she started to collaborate with Andean photography archives to digitize, preserve, and exhibit their holdings. She curated a city-wide exhibition of Indigenous Martin Chambi's