Madre

Marisol Mendez

2022 — Bolivia

About this series

MADRE celebrates the diversity of Bolivian culture, focusing on the representation of women. The project takes a critical stance that questions both my personal and national history, as well as the place women have been granted in it. This series lays out a narrative through a multiplicity of bodies, symbols and times that subverts religious icons, relating them to the indigenous culture. Likewise, the interspersed documentary or staged photographs mean that new Bolivian identities can be added in the first and third person.
The project includes indigenous and mestizo women, reinterpreted religious figures, retouched family photographs, rediscovered Andean traditions, and carefully staged portraits. The rich variety of images invites us to question the white, patriarchal canon that prevails in the representation of women in Bolivia, alongside the presence of the class struggle and religious influence.

Photographer: Marisol Mendez
Nationality: Bolivian
Based in: Bolivia
Website: www.marisol-mendez.com
Instagram: @marisol___mendez

Marisol Mendez (1991) uses her camera to study the tension between truth and fiction, the tight relationship between what a photograph creates and the (sur)real it comes from. Through her images she seeks to deconstruct hegemonic narratives and confront them with the friction of the heterogeneous.
Her work has been exhibited as part of Format Festival, Getxophoto and Athens Photo Festival among others. She has been extensively featured including in The British Journal of Photography, Paper Journal, LensCulture and GUP Magazine.
Marisol was selected as the PHmuseum 2021 Photography Grant New Generation Prize winner for her project MADRE and was one of the recipients of the Michael Reichmann’s Project Grant awarded by Photolucida.