Fashion, Biopolitics, and Social Criticism<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In Peru, 300,000 women and 16,000 men were forcibly sterilized during a birth control campaign orchestrated by the Fujimori government between 1996 and 2000. In official speeches and texts, there is no trace of this chapter in history; the state has never publicly acknowledged these violent acts or compensated the victims and their families\u200a\u2014\u200amost of them from poor, rural, Andean communities. Other examples of government-driven forced-sterilization programs (in China, the United States, India, Sweden, and Canada) bear witness to similar policies of appropriation and disposition imposed on citizens\u2019 bodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outraged that the Peruvian state has denied this campaign and that the victims\u2019 stories remain absent from the public sphere, fashion designer and social scientist Luc\u00eda Cuba launched Art\u00edculo 6: Narrativas de g\u00e9nero, fortaleza y pol\u00edtica<\/em>. Aiming to break the code of silence and influence public opinion, the Peruvian media, and the political program, Cuba, through her project, opens new opportunities for dialogue by means of twelve \u201cactions\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200ainstallations, fashion show-performances, videos, conferences, and workshops (2012\u201317). At the intersection of fashion and activism, these actions revolve around a collection of thirty-four garments printed and embroidered with archived images, symbols, and text fragments drawn from political speeches and victims\u2019 testimonies. Reinterpreting traditional Andean clothing, the performative garments of Art\u00edculo 6<\/em> reflect the social and physical trauma engendered by these irreversible sterilizations. Constrictive blouses and braids that cover the models\u2019 faces decry the women\u2019s inability to defend themselves against violations of their sexual and reproductive rights, even though those rights are recognized in the Constitution of Peru. Their bound bodies speak of pain, injustice, and mourning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These politically textured costumes become vectors of information: activated during encounters with diverse audiences in local and international contexts, they are also outfits of collective memory, reminding us that the victims are still waiting for justice to be done. Unremittingly, through her radically engaged clothing, Luc\u00eda Cuba underlines the complexity of the question of human-rights violations in Peru and provokes social change by creating new narratives in alliance with civil society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translated from the French by Louise Ashcroft<\/p>\n\n\n\n