Against the Grain: An Artist's Survival Guide to Peru

What does it take to be an artist in a country where physical survival, much less artistic survival, is a feat? Filmmaker Ann Kaneko traveled to Peru between 2001 and 2006 as that country underwent convulsions resulting from its bloody history. She profiled a multicultural group of artists who have paid a price for their very public and politically audacious art. Of his retablos, or portable Catholic altars that mingle religious and political imagery, Claudio Jiménez Quispe says, “All of these I made with fear, but I did it anyway.” Alfredo Márquez’s silk­screened poster of a lipsticked Chairman Mao, icon of the Shining Path, earned him a four-year prison sentence, while Natalia Iguíñiz courted a government investigation for her art. Eduardo Tokeshi, a Japanese Peruvian artist, had to reconcile his shared ethnic origin with President Alberto Fujimori with hatred for his corrupt regime. This colorful, enthralling documentary shows how Fujimori’s hard-line rule galvanized Peruvian artists into daring and spectacular political actions.