La Pinchajarawis
2011
Video with sound
2 minutes
Philosopher, drag queen, activist, and founder of the Museo Travesti del Perú, Giuseppe Campuzano (Lima, 1969–2013) ignited a critical debate around the politics of representation and the memory of the travesti body. His performances, interventions, and writings disrupted spaces dominated by heterosexual subjectivity and redistributed power, challenging the modern-colonial Western perspective on sexuality and northern epistemologies. His strange archive of histories, memories, chronicles, and collages forms a vital collection of counter-fictions—tools for continuing to survive and resist the normalized forms of domination and pathologization.
La Pinchajarawis refers to a traditional genre of Andean poetry, Jarawi or Harawi, which was common during the Inca Empire. In a state of sorrow or melancholy, the Harawi expresses intimate feelings related to love and memory through song. The video’s aesthetic echoes colonial religious painting. Giuseppe appears in drag as the Mater Dolorosa, eclipsing the sun while singing a melody that weaves language with queer experience, simultaneously evoking a cosmic, shamanic, and androgynous past.
