In this conversation space presented by the LOCALES curatorial collective (Sara Alberani and Chiara Siravo), Valentín Roma and Daniela Ortiz will be talking about the artist’s work over the last four years since her return to Cuzco, in which her search for languages and aesthetics has been influenced by the need to communicate and tell those stories of struggle, political organisation and resistance that have been silenced due to the political persecution of those who oppose imperialism.

Daniela Ortiz lives and works in Urubamba, Peru. Through her work, she aims to generate visual narratives in which the concepts of nationality, racialization, social class and genre are explored to critically understand structures of colonial, patriarchal, imperialist and capitalist power. Her recent research concerns the need to recover historical internationalist and antiimperialist political experiences from the global south that have been erased in a context of persecution. During the last few years her work has also dealt with Europe's migratory control system, its link with colonialism and the legal mechanisms created by European institutions. She has also developed projects about the Peruvian upper class and its exploitative relationship with domestic workers and the colonial role of extractivism of the mining industry. Her work has been recently exhibited in the Kunsthaus Zürich (2024), the Fondazione Sandretto (2023), the Neumarkt Theater Zürich (2023), the Hamburger Kunsthalle and the Kadist Art Foundation in Paris (2020–21), the Kunsthalle Wien (2021), the 11th edition of the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art in the Röda Sten Konsthall in Göteborg (2021) and the Triennial at the New Museum in New York (2018).

LOCALES is a curatorial platform founded in Rome that aims to inspire a reflection on the public sphere through artistic practices. It is directed and curated by Sara Alberani, Marta Federici and Chiara Siravo. Through a series of site-specific programmes involving commissions of new artworks, explorations of public spaces, educational activities and performances, LOCALES addresses the complexity of contemporary urgencies starting from the political and social history of symbolic places in the city and their local communities.