The Resistance of Silence creates tension between two extremes of photographic representation in political rhetoric. First, there are photographs taken during various protests in Lima between 2012 and 2019, the latest being captured on the day of the dissolution of the Congress of the Republic of Peru. In contrast, there is a set of official images taken from the Congress’s own broadcasting system, using the keyword “minute of silence.” These refer to the moment when congress members observe a symbolic minute of silence in commemoration of the death or memory of an individual or group. “From the theatricalization of politics,” says Arnau Roselló, “to the power of representation of the mask (persona), power relations are literally pierced by the image.” Both the protest images and those from the congressional chamber occupy a shared space. Their friction aims to reveal the symbolic weaknesses of actors and performances in the practice of politics, as well as the cyclical and symbiotic nature of this ecosystem.  

Author: Musuk Nolte