Lucia Cuba - Review
Lucia Cuba. La Espera (The Waiting), Artculo 6, 2013. Image: Fashion Space Gallery.
Peruvian artist Lucia Cuba operates at the intersection between fashion design and social research; creating garments and other wearable items which function as performative and political devices. Cuba’s garments explore gender and bio-politics both symbolically and linguistically, often containing explicitly political text. The design object is pushed beyond its conventional commercial and aesthetic attributes, and instead encourages us to consider it a tool for social and political change.
Currently featuring as part of the Mundo Latinx exhibition at the Fashion Space Gallery in London, Articulo6: narratives of gender, strength and politics, employs clothing, photography and film to draw attention the forced sterilisations implemented during the government of Alberto Fujimori in Peru. The project can currently be seen amongst visual artists whose work also explore the struggle for visibility in current social, political and economic structures. In this time of political unrest, identity politics and polarisation, Mundo Latinx brings together stories of reinvention in the face of dominant stereotypes.
The danger of group exhibitions that seek to ‘bring together’ works that explore underrepresented communities is homogenising these stories into a singular narrative. Fortunately, the curators from The White Line Projects have created a diverse and nuanced exhibition in which individual narratives of resistance are mutually reinforced. I am reminded of what curator Hans Ulrich Obrist calls ‘globality’. Invoking Édouard Glissant’s mondialité - the power of dialogue, coexistence and creolisation in a globalised world.
Cuba’s project, comprising of a thirty-four piece clothing collection and “12 actions”, has been distilled into a photography and film installation for Mundo Latinx. The title, Articulo6, recalls the Sixth Article of the Second Chapter in the General Health Law of Peru which establishes the freedom for contraception and sexual health support. Viewers are confronted with the rarely heard testimonies of the indigenous women who faced forced sterilisation in the late 1990s as part of a 'family planning programme' called “Contraceptive Voluntary Surgery”, which was in breach of Article 6.
300,000 indigenous women were violated of their reproductive rights at this time, the details of which can be found here. The testimonies of these women are still coming to light, powering a broader campaign for reproductive rights in the face of gender and racial discrimination across the globe.
Cuba has interwoven these stories with raw materials including political speeches, research information, installations, meta-garments, workshops, performances, photography and film. The exhaustive project is a reminder that methods of silencing perpetuate reproductive health inequality, and the potential for design to focus a critical lens on this issue.
Lucia Cuba. La Espera (The Waiting), Articulo 6, 2013. Image: Erasmo Wong
The film El Articulo 6 (2012) captures a compelling Carla Rincón wearing the artist's designs inspired by traditional Peruvian Andean imagery. As Rincón moves expressively across the deserted pastoral environment, the lens focusses on the embroidered text which coats the garments she wears. The scene’s poignancy is enhanced by the Peruvian a capella song Lorochay; viewers are encouraged to wear the provided enclosed headphones to listen to these vocals.
The film loops on a screen placed next La Espera/The Waiting (2013), a haunting photographic image which captures four women posing mechanically by the side of a dusty road, their plaited hair hanging neatly over their face, covering it entirely. This is a potent motif in Cuba’s work; here the hidden face symbolises the survivors’ struggle for visibility. We look at these women, frozen in time, waiting for the justice that has not yet arrived.
“Articulo 6 garments are not intended to circulate as commercial objects” Cuba writes. “Their activation depends on the willingness of different actors to use them. Once activated, they are returned to the designer for another activation in the future.” By challenging the commercialisation of fashion design, Cuba encourages us to consider fashion beyond its value within consumer culture. Essentially silent objects are reembodied as critical devices; a loud gesture in defiance of oppression.
Fashion has always been used as symbol for resistance and reinvention. Taking a step further, Cuba conceives garments as first agents for change, connection and protest. Situated within an exhibition dedicated to artists who are actively affirming and reconstructing their heritage, Articulo6 makes a case for clothing as a tool to disrupt and subvert the discriminatory contexts in which it is worn.
Mundo Latinx was at Fashion Space Gallery 8 February 2019 - 4 May 2019.
To find out more about Lucia Cuba click here.
