The work of Peruvian artist and activist Daniela Ortiz (Cusco, 1985) has its foundations in decolonial feminism, and is against racism and classism. Between 2012 and 2017 around October 12, she was involved in activities questioning the commemorations of 'Día de la Hispanidad' (Hispanic Day). In 2016, pregnant with her son, she received a blood transfusion from a Spanish citizen in the performance 'Jus Sanguinis' to denounce the legal criteria for the granting of nationality.
'This land will never be fertile for having given birth to colonisers' is the first anthological review of her career and brings together 31 projects conceived throughout the last decade. Her works examine the multiple counts of institutionalized violence toward the migrant population. She investigates the experience of domestic workers, explores the abuses perpetrated by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency and by those responsible for withdrawing child custody.
With 'Caste paintings' she brings back a pictorial genre cultivated during the 18th century that cataloged castes and racial mixtures in colonised territories, as in the case of the Viceroyalty of Peru ruled by the tyrant Manuel de Amat y Junyent, who also happened to order the construction of the Virreina palace where this exhibition takes place. Ortiz uses iconographic elements to recriminate the current normalisation of racism at all levels and exposes it right in the same room where a portrait of the viceroy hangs.