My identity is marked by that mix between the indigenous and the urban, between the ancestral and the modern

Introduction

Since 2009, the official name of Bolivia has been the Plurinational State of Bolivia, reflecting the multiethnic makeup of its population. The history of the region has been marked by colonisation and annexation – by the Spanish Conquistadors and, before that, the Incas. But, while the incoming powers have taken political and economic control, culture has tended to the syncretic, resulting in complex hybrids of new and old, imposed and indigenous. This is not uniform; the interweaving of cultures is most apparent in rural areas where there is a larger indigenous population. In the cities, as in many other countries with a minority indigenous population, tastes and identities tend to the globalised and the northern.

It is within this rich though unequal sociocultural context that the artist River Claure situates his work. A man with indigenous forebears raised in a contemporary urban environment, his work grows from his exploration of the nature of personal identity. That exploration recognises the syncretic processes that shape cultural identity are not simply the melding of different elements into a homogenous new whole. Rather, it is the weaving of threads to create a fabric which nonetheless retains within it the distinct qualities of its individual constituents. He describes this process using the Aymara word ch’ixi. This term, coined by the sociologist Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, draws on an analogy with Aymara blanket making in which, for example, black and white yarns are woven together creating the impression of a third intermediate colour, ch’ixi. While the word literally means grey, it carries with it the more nuanced inference of betweenness. The significance of this metaphor lies in the way it acknowledges equal weight to both dominant and subaltern cultures. And, in so doing, emphasises that it is only in fully recognising the juxtaposition of these two reciprocal opposites that one can truly understand the new non-binary state of being so created. One that is neither fully subsumed by the dominant culture nor entirely separate from it.

In the three photographic series we will discuss here, River Claure deploys an interplay of cultures and histories in his ongoing exploration of identity. In the first, he depicts figures from biblical narrative using indigenous symbolism set within a latter-day context. The second takes as its starting point Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic novella ‘The Little Prince’, situating the artist’s re-imagining within the Andean landscape and culture. The final series we discuss draws on the history of silver mining in the region of Potosí in the southern highlands of Bolivia. ‘Mita’, the title of this series, refers to a system implemented by the Spanish colonial government that forced indigenous men to work under extremely harsh conditions mining silver for export. The practice had a devastating impact on indigenous communities, leading to long-term cultural and economic inequality and a significant decline in population.

These are darkly complex subjects, and River Claure is careful not to suggest there are any simple answers. Rather, his images employ the imaginative speculation of play. It is an evolving practice that, as he puts it, began less with a search for identity per se than with unresolved feelings of doubt.

Alasdair Foster

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© River Claure ‘Mano’ [hand] from the series ‘Warawar Wawa’ [Son of the Stars] 2019–20

Interview

You have explored a number of different creative practices. What drew you finally to photography?

I always say that I came to photography because I am distracted. Other disciplines that interest me a lot – like writing or painting – require long concentration on the same object, an attention that, in my case, tends to fade fast. In high school I used to draw a lot with pencil and later I became interested in filmmaking. I was about to study directing, but I realised that to make films I had to become someone who directs a lot of people and manages big budgets. So, in a way, I ran away from that world and took refuge in photography, a practice I imagined to be more solitary, more self-sufficient. Of course, in time I came to understand that this idea was an illusion. Photography is also a deeply collaborative act – and even more so with the kind of photography I do now.

© River Claure ‘Guerra’ [war] from the series ‘Jinetes’ [riders] 2018

How did ‘Jinetes’ [riders] begin?

It was one of my first exercises as a photographer, born with few pretensions. I was participating in a workshop for Latin American photographers – Cristina de Middel was a tutor. I made these images, without much premeditation but, when I saw them together, they began to resonate with my own feelings about syncretism and local identity.

Over time, I came to understand that through my photographs I am not seeking to represent a reality, but to speculate. To imagine other possible ways of life: not only to denounce the effects of coloniality, but also to propose alternative narratives, other worlds.

This work brings together indigenous symbolism with the western biblical allegory of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, set within the Chiquitano forest. Why did you choose this approach?

What interested me was not so much a literal representation of religious or cultural symbols, but how certain everyday images and gestures can evoke something broader, more mythical. This is an area where the mix between the colonial, the indigenous, and the spiritual is complex.

The photographs were taken in the lowlands of Bolivia, in the Chiquitania region – an Amazonian jungle area where several villages were founded during the Jesuit missions of the early 1700s. Christian iconography is still very present, but it is re-signified in local practices, in the bodies. It was in this crossing of imaginaries that the tone of the images – something between the biblical and the profoundly terrestrial – emerged.

[Left] © River Claure ‘Hambre’ [famine] from the series ‘Jinetes’ [riders] 2018
[Right] © River Claure ‘Victoria’ [victory] from the series ‘Jinetes’ [riders] 2018

When did you first become aware of the complex nature of local identity?

I think I began to understand this when I asked myself about my own sense of identity. This wasn’t so much a search for belonging, but rather a series of doubts: what don’t I identify with… what parts of me are imposed… what things have I inherited without realising it? It was easier to start from what didn’t fit than from what did.

As I explored these questions, I also observed how, with globalisation, many identities tend to homogenise. Not only because of the circulation of images or symbols, but also because of the interests of capital that shape what is shown, what is sold, what is consumed. Faced with this, a constant tension arises in my mind: should we protect certain cultural practices, or should we allow them to change, mutate, even disappear?

How would you answer that question?

In my work I try not to romanticise the idea of a fixed or pure identity. I am more interested in thinking of the indigenous, the local, the Andean, as something in motion, something in dialogue with the world that reinvents itself in contact with the global. Instead of seeing it as a loss, I think of it as a possibility, creating new ways of being: the variegated, the ch’ixi. For me, what is important is that these hybrids do not erase memories or tensions, but rather that they make them visible.

© River Claure ‘Llegada’ [arrival] from the series ‘Warawar Wawa’ [Son of the Stars] 2019–20

The next series I would like to discuss is ‘Warawar Wawa’. What led you to choose Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s novella ‘The Little Prince’ as the starting point for this work?

This was born in a very intuitive and playful way. Something that interests me a lot about play is that, although it is often associated only with childhood, it is actually a very powerful way of generating knowledge. Playing is a way to experience the world without absolute certainties, to speculate, to imagine possibilities. And that is how this project arose: as a speculative journey, a visual fiction that allowed me to review how the Andean is represented today.

While the starting point was ‘The Little Prince’, this is not as a literal adaptation. It was a way to question certain imaginaries about the Andes, which often remain overly purist, frozen in time, or completely fetishised. By taking Saint-Exupéry’s story as a starting point, I was able to produce more friendly, even colourful, images and at the same time talk about complex issues: migration, identity, material culture, territory.

My grandparents migrated from the Andes to the city in the 1960s, so my identity is marked by that mix between the indigenous and the urban, between the ancestral and the modern. With ‘Warawar Wawa’ I wanted to explore that duality from a non-essentialist place, from the ch’ixi, from the indeterminate.

[Left] © River Claure ‘Partida’ [departure] from the series ‘Warawar Wawa’ [Son of the Stars] 2019–20
[Right] © River Claure ‘San Cristóbal’ from the series ‘Warawar Wawa’ [Son of the Stars] 2019–20

What does ‘warawar wawa’ mean?

When I started working with translators to see how to render the title in Aymara, we realised that the idea of ‘prince’ as a monarchical figure had no real equivalent in this worldview. So, we decided to come up with a title that was more mystical, more poetic, more appropriate. One that would broaden the symbolic universe instead of imposing external categories on it. Warawar wawa means ‘son of the stars’ in Aymara.

[Left] © River Claure ‘Virgen Cerro 1’ from the series ‘Warawar Wawa’ [Son of the Stars] 2019–20
[Right] © River Claure ‘Cisco’ from the series ‘Warawar Wawa’ [Son of the Stars] 2019–20

How did you go about reimagining this story?

I work a lot with symbolism. For example, here [above left] the residues of modernity (a brick, metals, and fireworks) are mixed with the religious iconography inherited from the colony. I am especially interested in playing with Christian symbols, not only because of their significant role in the conquest and evangelisation of Bolivia, but also because they remain an active part of the daily symbolic landscape. However, I am not interested in repeating them as they were imposed, but rather in stretching them, rewriting them, setting them in dialogue with other possible meanings.

In this case, I am reinterpreting the iconography of the Cerro Virgin [depicted in paintings with the body of the Virgin Mary merging from a great silver-producing mountain]. This figure condenses many of the tensions that run through my work: the female figure is, at the same time, the Virgin Mary of the Catholic imaginary and the Pachamama, Mother Earth in the Andean cosmovision. The Cerro Virgin is the patron saint of miners and, therefore, a symbol of the historical – and often violent – relationship between the human body, territory, and forced labour. It is in this overlapping of contradictory meanings that I find a fertile space to imagine other possible readings of who we are and how we inhabit this space.

[Left] © River Claure ‘Villa Adela’ from the series ‘Warawar Wawa’ [Son of the Stars] 2019–20
[Right] © River Claure ‘Ekeko’ from the series ‘Warawar Wawa’ [Son of the Stars] 2019–20

In Saint-Exupery’s novella the central relationship is between the Little Prince and his rose, with the underlying message that it is not rarity but love that makes a being special… How did you translate the symbol of the rose in your re-working?

I had been thinking about how to represent the rose garden of the original book – that moment when the Little Prince discovers that his rose is not the only one in the universe. I wanted to find a way to translate that scene to the Andean context without falling into the literal. That’s how I came up with the idea of working with women from [the city of] El Alto and fantasising that their hair was living roses. It was a way of imagining that garden from an affective and powerful place, linked to the experience of the indigenous feminine, but also to the collective beauty, to what springs from the earth, to what persists.

The figure of the chola – a woman of indigenous roots who wears a pollera [skirt] – is deeply complex. In my case, it has a personal dimension: my grandmother and great-grandmother are cholas. They grew up speaking Aymara as their mother tongue and to this day they preserve their traditional way of dressing. During my adolescence, this generated many contradictions for me. Sometimes I even felt ashamed. In high school I didn’t like my classmates to know that I had such strong indigenous roots, because – although it sounds harsh – even today that can be a reason for mockery and discrimination. Now, with more distance, what embarrasses me is that adolescent denial of my own roots. I suppose that talking about it in this way is also part of the process of reconciliation with my history.

[Left] © River Claure ‘Casco’ [helmet] from the series ‘Warawar Wawa’ [Son of the Stars] 2019–20
[Right] © River Claure ‘Niño’ [child] from the series ‘Warawar Wawa’ [Son of the Stars] 2019–20

How did you select the Little Prince himself?

I wanted him to be like me when I was a child: dark-haired, wearing a soccer jersey, sneakers – not someone who embodied a romantic idea of the past, but rather a contemporary subject, the fruit of Andean modernity. We undertook casting in El Alto. The flyer said something like: We are looking for a boy between nine and twelve years old, a native of El Alto, willing to travel with his mother or father through the Andes for two weeks. All paid.

Almost a hundred children showed up, including some teenagers and also some girls. I could have chosen several, there were many powerful faces, but I finally decided on Jhonatan. His parents were especially available and open to the experience, and that made the logistics of the trip much easier.

The final series I would like to explore with you is ‘Mita’.

I’m not sure exactly when ‘Mita’ started. I knew that I needed to create a second project. I think that’s what happens when a first work resonates: there is a pressure, a need, to continue almost immediately. That said, I was very clear that I didn’t want to simply repeat the formula or make images similar to those of ‘Warawar Wawa’. That’s why almost three years passed between the publication of that project and the beginning of this new work.

I began to delve into the history of my family in Bolivia: where we came from, how the migrations came about, the family memory. I discovered that both my grandparents had worked in a silver mine in an Andean community before migrating to Cochabamba in the early 1960s to escape the political conflict and seek better living conditions. Here began the first questions for this project: what would have happened if my grandparents had never migrated? What if I had been born in those mountains and in that context?

I decided to visit those places. Travelling through them, I came to understand that what really interested me was not simply my family history, but to speculate about something broader: the collapse, the exhaustion of the world.

[Left] © River Claure ‘km 163’ from the series ‘Mita’ 2022–24
[Right] © River Claure ‘Ruinas (sin título)’ from the series ‘Mita’ 2022–24

How did you go about that?

‘Mita’ was born there, at that crossroads between the personal and the historical, between intimate memory and a kind of visual essay on the end of a way of life. In it I try to create an amorphous blend of time – fusing past, present, and future. The resulting images don’t seek to unfold a narrative – rather, they feel like fragments, suspended moments within a broader scene. They are living tableaux in which foundational myths, Latin American colonial archives, and memories from my own family history come together.

I’m not interested in offering an objective ‘truth’ in the documentary sense. Instead, I try to challenge our assumptions and explore how identity is shaped by territory – especially when that territory has been marked by centuries of violence, extractivism, and colonisation. In this sense, the project also becomes a meditation on landscape. What happens when a landscape is exhausted? When industry and modernity have consumed everything? Could it be that in depleting our environment, we are also depleting ourselves?

The scenes seem both performative and mysterious…

They are photographic rituals located in the Andes, a place from which to speculate. I am not seeking to present answers, but to open questions that the body and the land might feel long before they can be spoken.

[Left] © River Claure ‘Pianista’ from the series ‘Mita’ 2022–24
[Right] © River Claure ‘Encuentro (sin título)’ from the series ‘Mita’ 2022–24

Can you give an example?

For me, this image [above right] brings many things to mind. First, I think of the biblical story of Jacob wrestling with the angel – those classical paintings that capture a struggle that is both physical and spiritual. A symbolic confrontation in which two opposing forces locked in tension – or perhaps in an embrace – set against the backdrop of the mountains. It also reminds me of yin and yang, the ancient idea of duality.

In this case, a juku (which is how mineral thieves are referred to in these mining communities) is grappling with an angel. Why does this angel carry a sousaphone? Is he announcing the juka’s death?

Who are the people who perform in your images and how do you go about working with them? Is the process directorial, collaborative, or improvisational?

It’s really all three of the approaches you mention. I often begin with a set of ideas, sketches, or imagined scenes I’d like to photograph – but I always leave room for dialogue and spontaneity. I see myself as someone who invents the premise of a game, then invites others to play it with me. Once we’re in motion, the process opens up: ideas shift, things emerge from the moment, and together we create something unexpected.

Working with people – many of them non-professional performers, often local residents – is a central part of the process. I try to make space for their presence, their suggestions, their agency. Sometimes a gesture or suggestion from them transforms the entire image. It’s in that mixture – between direction, collaboration, and improvisation – where the real work happens.

[Left] © River Claure ‘Futbolistas 5’ from the series ‘Mita’ 2022–24
[Right] © River Claure ‘Palliri’ from the series ‘Mita’ 2022–24

Finally, can you tell me about this photograph [above left], which seems to express this multivalent approach in its symbolism, social referents, and disturbing sense of narrative?

Here, one football player appears to be lynching another – or maybe that other is ascending gloriously into the sky. I’m particularly drawn to the ambiguity of gesture: the person on the ground is holding a stone, but the object almost blends into the earth behind him. That confusion feels important. That tension between brutality and transcendence speaks to me. It could be a metaphor for the world to come – chaotic, contradictory, full of unresolved symbols… I’m interested in how, even in something as vain as football, we find traces of ritual, power, and myth.

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The British Journal of Photography named River Claure in their Ones to Watch list for 2020. In 2021 he received the Eduardo Abaroa National Award, Bolivia; a PhotoVogue grant, Italy; the Genesis Imaging Award at FORMAT Festival, United Kingdom; and won the Getxophoto Festival Open Call, Spain. He was awarded a Magnum Foundation Fellowship in 2023. His monograph ‘Warawar Wawa’ was published by Raya Editorial, Colombia, in 2020. He lives and works in Cochabamba.

Photo: Ariana Zabalaga

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This interview is a Talking Pictures original.

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