Reading beauty and irony in two retablos from Edilberto Jiménez in «Un retablo para el LUM»

Abstract

This article integrates and juxtaposes the personal reflections of Edilberto Jimenez in his own creative and historical process in both retablos that we will analyze in the first part of this essay. In which we demonstrate that «My Andes and his deep love» (1987) and «Lucia» (1988) deploy three strategies from the Ayacucho people in the internal armed conflict in Peru. Beauty, erotism and irony works to reshow the female body as the symbol of a new erotic and nutrient narrative. I elaborate a theoretical tool called «desfamiliarization» in order to read the continuity of the irony as a strategy in the retablo made at the activity «One retablo for the LUM». I contend via a close reading of this activity, that these retablos are political tools and art pieces that go beyond an ethnographic value, and embody powerful and transgressive strategies.