Leiden University Student Repository

García Ostria, Fiona María (2021)

Confronting the erased: Maya Watanabe’s Liminal and the legacy of Peru’s internal conflict

Bachelor thesis | Kunstgeschiedenis (BA)

What to do when confronted with fractured memories? This is a question that arises when thinking about the remnants of the internal conflict in Peru that took place between the years 1980 and 2000. The aftermath of this conflict has left the country aching for ways to represent and make sense of the events that allowed for the deaths of over 30.000 people to go unaccounted and unacknowledged until the official reports made by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission were published in 2003. The mistreatment and indifference towards the lives of the people affected by this conflict has led artists such as Maya Watanabe to look for artistic ways to deal with the remnants of the tragedy. Through her video, Liminal, the Peruvian artist strives to make sense of the traumatic memory of the victims by filming the exhumation of the clandestine mass graves where their bodies were tossed. Hence, in this thesis the implications of representing such traumatic events and the role that the medium...Show moreWhat to do when confronted with fractured memories? This is a question that arises when thinking about the remnants of the internal conflict in Peru that took place between the years 1980 and 2000. The aftermath of this conflict has left the country aching for ways to represent and make sense of the events that allowed for the deaths of over 30.000 people to go unaccounted and unacknowledged until the official reports made by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission were published in 2003. The mistreatment and indifference towards the lives of the people affected by this conflict has led artists such as Maya Watanabe to look for artistic ways to deal with the remnants of the tragedy. Through her video, Liminal, the Peruvian artist strives to make sense of the traumatic memory of the victims by filming the exhumation of the clandestine mass graves where their bodies were tossed. Hence, in this thesis the implications of representing such traumatic events and the role that the medium of film has on such representation will be analysed.Show less

Peru

Maya Watanabe

necropolitics

cultural memory

trauma film

Shining Path

Author

García Ostria, Fiona María

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Arts, Media and Society

Supervisors

Lauritano, S.M.

ECTS Credits

10

Language

en