Courageous artist molds powerful call for justice and peace

From the gentle curve of his mouth and the soft glisten in his eyes, few would imagine that Claudio Jiménez Quispe, the humble retablo master from Ayacucho, Peru, has been attacked and beaten by terrorists. Few would imagine that he was forced to steal his family away from their village to the safety of anonymity in a dangerous city. Few would imagine that the detailed figurines of cheerful bakers, traditional dancers and peaceful angels, each hand-crafted and placed with care in Jiménez’s breath-taking retablos, were once the figures of terrorist radicals, bloodied peasants and weeping children, who painstakingly retold the story of Jiménez and his traumatized country.

Jiménez, who began creating retablos at the age of six in the highlands of the Andes Mountains and spent several weeks at Southwestern College as an artist in residenc in 1999, used his art for years to show the rest of the world the travesties taking place in his country during the brutal regime of the Maoist guerrilla terrorist group called Sendero Luminoso, “Shining Path.” Jiménez’s artwork celebrates Peru’s colorful culture and traditions. Jiménez brought a taste of that culture to a special showing at Las Positas College in Livermore, California, earlier this year.

Jiménez speaks Spanish and Quechua, an indigenous Andean dialect, but through the universal language of his artwork his message has been shared in countries around the world.

Although the retablo, a painted box inlaid with three-dimensional figurines, is traditionally a religious altarpiece found in Peruvian Catholic churches, Jiménez has turned the medium into something more.

“He has moved traditional religious retablo iconography into the 21^st century,” said Dr. Sharon Taylor, former dean of arts and communications at SWC. “Because his works transcend cultural boundaries and often break with traditions, he offers visual readers multicultural topics and social commentary from a Latin American perspective they may not have encountered.”

Taylor first stumbled across Jiménez’s work in San Antonio, Texas in 1992, when a shopkeeper suggested she might not want to look behind the closed doors of a very small retablo in the back of the shop, interest piqued. Taylor said she opened the brightly-painted, wooden retablo, no bigger than a music box, to find a gory scene of red-hooded communist guerilla fighters, armored state militia and ragged peasants spilling blood over the green mountains of Peru beneath the glowering eyes of a vulture. It was one of the first retablos Jiménez smuggled out of the country.

“I knew what he was doing,” she said. “He was trying to tell a story.”

Taylor, who studies personal narratives expressed through cultural art, was familiar with the situation in Peru and was immediately intrigued by Jiménez’s retablo. She flew to Lima to find this artist who risked physical harm to smuggle his story into the hands of the surrounding world.

“At the time, most international newspapers weren’t covering what was happening in Peru,” said Taylor, who developed a friendship with Jiménez and his family. “His art was one of the first representations of what was really going on and most of it we had to smuggle out or they would have killed him.”

In response to the Maoist insurgents, the state sent military forces into village areas where, behind black ski masks, they tortured, raped and massacred civilians in a poor attempt to stop the terrorist movements. Shining Path retaliated in full-force, locking the Peruvian villagers between two equally ruthless armies. Jiménez moved to Lima after being attacked in his village by Shining Path militants for statements he made that they believed contradicted their cause.

“If they had found his workshop, his art,” said Taylor, “he would not still be here.”

But the move did little to lend the distraught artist any peace. Lima was also wrought with the devastation of Shining Path, which used its city network to set off car bombs and attack power lines, causing rolling blackouts and destruction.

So Jiménez set to work.

One of his most stunning pieces is “Tears of the Peruvian Child,” which depicts, in the cruel detail of Jiménez’s flawless plaster models, the use of children to set detonations off in the cities. Shining Path coerced young children to carry out dangerous tasks for them and, when the smoke and ash settled over the broken city, they would collect their dead bodies and throw them in the dumps.

With hand-made, sun-baked figures, Jiménez enshrined “Tears of the Peruvian Child,” with images of peasants begging for peace and justice, praying to the Virgin Mary and raising the flag of Peru, and the weeping form of a child sitting among the ruins of his city.

Nearly 70,000 Peruvians died or went missing between 1980-2000, the most heated decades of the conflict. Three-quarters of the victims spoke Quechua, like Jiménez, suggesting that those most devastated by conflict were indigenous peasants in the Andean highlands in areas like Ayacucho.

Peace is slowly returning to the mountain villages of Ayacucho, Jiménez said, but he remains in Lima with his family, working on his art and continuing to share his country’s struggles. Conveying those, he said, is an integral part of his craft.

“My culture and experiences are a looming influence in my art,” said Jiménez, who also brings to life the religious and cultural history of his people in his colorful retablos. “I want to show and teach the outside world the experiences and customs of Peru. At the same time, it was a way to preserve and continue fighting for this art.”

Jiménez gave demonstrations on retablo art during his time at SWC more than a decade ago, showcasing his meticulous models made from a plaster of potato, peach and agave juice and a chalk-like powder called gypsum. The figures are then brought to life through colored paints, most of which are administered with just one or two animal hairs to perfect the detail. Jiménez said, however, that creating the art is the easy part. Harder is uncovering the struggles and sharing the burdens of the people whose stories he aims to tell.

“The most difficult aspect for me is having the knowledge to deal with the subject,” he said. “For example, talking about justice in Peru is not easy. One has to go to the prisons, coexist with the prisoners, see for yourself.”

Jiménez’s religious and political works were exhibited during his showing at Las Positas, between detailed depictions of life for the Ayacuchanos.

“I thought his style was incredibly unique and intricate,” said Deborah Fakhri, 21, a Berkeley resident. “I definitely saw a lot of symbology in his artwork, which I could tell was referencing the political environment or the spiritual environment from his homeland.”

Fakhri, who has an interest in iconography, said the retablos were not what she was expecting.

“I really enjoyed seeing the way he puts color and detail into every single piece. You can just see how much passion he has for his work and it really comes through in a very beautiful and meaningful way.”

Pieces of Jiménez’s art have been added to the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Louvre in Paris, and are regularly shown at the Museum of History in Balboa Park, San Diego.

Taylor said Jiménez’s work translates well across cultural borders because of his precision.

“To provide transnational audiences access to the scenes depicted in his retablos, he always considers the viewers,” she said. “He consistently searches for international symbols and signs and integrates them into his works. In addition to his works’ symbolism, the placement of figures within the retablos is exact. Similar to a writer’s use of syntax, Claudio contends that the arrangement of the characters is crucial to the message he is conveying.”

Taylor said Jiménez’s form of art could be considered visual analogs, counterparts to the Latin American genre known as Testimonio. This type of expression, she said, presented in first person as a witness might, is in keeping with much of the work that comes out of SWC’s art program, where so many of the students use artistic expression to tell their own stories.

“Claudio’s rare ability to orchestrate details within a visual field encourages audiences to enter into collaboration with his work,” she said, “while delving ever more deeply into the story surrounding the events depicted and forcing viewers to consider their implications.”

Taylor said she believes the South Bay community could gain a great deal from a second visit from Jiménez.

“He has extended his art to offer transnational audiences a practical tool to counter their own indifference and consider the condition of Other,” she said. “He bends the presentation of the story to create a deeper, truer reality for his audiences and San Diego is the perfect place for this opportunity.”

Despite his incredible efforts in the pursuit of justice and peace through an ancient and respected craft and his international recognition as an artist, Jiménez remains humble.

“I come from a family with traditions of retablos,” said Jiménez. “My father, Florentino Jimenez, has been one of the great masters. As a kid I was inspired by that and at 10 years of age in school I won a contest presenting this [art] and that spurred me to become a retablista. That’s when my soul connected with retablos and I have never left.”

Continuing to work with a gentle smile and listening eyes, telling his story one painted box at a time, Jiménez said that there are aspects of his life that he cannot explain in any spoken language.

“When words fall short, my hands speak for me through my art.”