CLAUDIA JOSKOWICZ: “BOLIVIA ES UN PAISAJE QUE COMPRENDO INSTINTIVAMENTE”
Claudia Joskowicz, a Bolivian visual artist with a 26-year career, discusses her recent exhibition "Artificios" at the Centro Cultural de España in La Paz. In this interview, she explores how myth, memory, and history intersect in the construction of the Santa Cruz imaginary, drawing on intimate memories, popular stories, and episodes linked to drug trafficking in 1980s tropical Bolivia. Joskowicz, who works across video and photography, describes her practice as a pedagogy of territory—a way to understand her country by revealing hidden tensions beneath official history.
This interview matters because it highlights how contemporary Bolivian artists are reclaiming and reinterpreting regional narratives often overshadowed by the country's dominant Andean cultural identity. Joskowicz's dual perspective, living between Bolivia and the United States, allows her to critically examine how stories survive and transform, offering a nuanced view of history as a space where the real and the fictional collide. Her work underscores art's role in questioning established truths and opening up alternative ways of knowing a place.