Configuring the New Lima Art Scene

Join the Department of Sociology for an insightful online seminar with Dr Giuliana Borea.

Dr Giuliana Borea is a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology, University of Essex and a Lecturer of Anthropology at the Department of Social Sciences, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru. Her research concerns contemporary art worlds, political economy and transnational networks; politics and practices of museum representation; issues of class and race; and place-making and sensory practices, with a focus on Peru and Latin America. Dr Borea has built her career at the intersection of research, teaching, curatorship and cultural policy. She has been Peru’s Director of Museums and Cultural Heritage, Coordinator of the Chavin National Museum and the Lima Museum of Contemporary Art, and co-founder of Tandem: Cultural Management for Development Association which fostered cultural policies from below.

Dr Borea is currently an Executive Council Member of the Latin American Studies Association´s Visual Culture Section. She has published numerous articles and book chapters and is the editor of Arte y Antropología: Estudios, Encuentros y Nuevos Horizontes (PUCP, 2017). Her curatorial practice includes the recent exhibitions Ite!Neno! Here!: Responses to Covid-19 (with Rember Yahuarcani) and Place-making, World-making: Amazonian Indigenous Art at Essex’s Art Exchange.

Dr Borea presents her new book Configuring the New Lima Art Scene: An Anthropological Analysis of Contemporary Art in Latin America  (Routledge, 2021).

The book examines the contemporary art world in Latin America from an anthropological perspective and recognises the recent reconfiguration of Lima’s art scene. It traces the practices of artists, curators, collectors, art dealers and museums identifying three key moments in this reconfiguration of contemporary art in Lima: artistic explorations and new curatorial narratives; museum reinforcement and the strengthening of Latin American art networks; and the rise of the art market. In so doing, Dr Borea highlights the different actors that come into play in activating and deactivating directions and imaginations.

The book exposes the practices of the local, global, indigeneity and politics in the arts and reveals that the strengthening of the Lima art scene has fostered the expansion of dominant art views and formats mobilised by transnational elite actors. Featuring analytical chapters interspersed with personal stories, this book presents an in-depth analysis of a specific art scene to open up a new way of understanding contemporary art practices in relation to globalisation, neoliberalism and the shaping of cities.

This online seminar is part of an open seminar series, hosted by the Department of Sociology, to find out more visit the Department of Sociology and follow us on Facebook.