Peru 2022

Title: Peace is a Corrosive Promise
Commissioner: Armando Andrade
Curators: Jorge Villarcorta, Viola Varotto
Exhibitor: Herbert Rodriguez

For the 59th Venice Biennale, Peru presents Herbert Rodriguez‘s solo exhibition “Peace is a corrosive promise“. The exhibition gathers 30 works and a projection of handcrafted slides. Among the works, there are pieces of agitprop (a mixture of photomontage, collage, stencil, silkscreen, and painting) and his mural newspapers “Arte – Vida“, 1989.

“Arte – Vida” documented what was happening during the Eighties in the political and cultural war theatre of the university campus of Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Lima, which was a stronghold of Sendero Luminoso. During the 1980s, this subversive group declared war on the Peruvian state and through terrorist actions and clashes with the Armed Forces had initiated a period of murderous violence in the country. Rodriguez countered the painted murals and gestures of Sendero Luminoso adepts on campus with his own collage-based mural pieces and, in the process, he put his life at risk.