Paper short abstract:

This presentation analyses Chaco (2001), Guadalupe Miles's series of photographs of indigenous people from north-west Argentina in order to demonstrate how through the perversion of the gaze it introduces a change in the representational politics of race in Argentinian visual arts.

Paper long abstract:

Chaco (2001), Guadalupe Miles's series of photographs of a Wichí community from Salta's Chaco region in north-west Argentina introduces a series of ruptures with previous forms of representation of indigenous people in Argentinian art photography. Through the analysis of the transgressive figures of the sensualised child and the effeminate man in Miles's photos from a perspective of race, this presentation argues that these photographs pervert and subvert the modes of reception, producing a disturbing effect in the spectator that exposes the arbitrary dimension of constructions of racial difference.