Visualizing Geography – Conversations about Geography and the Arts
Visualizing Geography – A Conversation with Peruvian photographer Victor Zea

Date: Friday, October 18, 2024
Time: 10:00 AM - 11:15 AM
Location: 1022 HN (Hybrid)

As a prelude to the Geography Awareness Week, hosted by the Hunter College Department of Geography and Environmental Science, join Professor Coline Chevrin and GEOG 27100 (Geography of South America) students for a conversation about how geography and documentary photography can intertwine to raise awareness and transform our reality.

Peruvian photographer Victor Zea will present his work "Rap on their Roots" (Rap en sus Raices) which explores a part of the hip hop movement in Peru and its diaspora, which takes rhymes into action. From collectivity, popular education, self-management and community organization, artists teach a sense of resistance, community and revaluation of our broad cultural identity. In the last years Victor Zea focused on the meeting between the Andean culture and hip hop culture through their oral expressions, rap and Quechua language. Quechua is considered the most widely spoken ancestral language in Peru and the Americas. Discrimination against the ethnic diversity of the communities, including the indigenous peoples, has been one of the factors that makes it difficult for the young generations to reconnect with their history, learn the customs and language of their ancestors. Rap and hip hop are powerful vehicles of a cultural movement to form links between the ancestral and the present, providing the possibility for these generations to heal, to recognize themselves, to find their roots and reinforce their personal identity within their community. From the Andes to New York, this ongoing project portrays a group of rappers who emerged with the intention of revaluing and revitalizing their identity, their ancestral heritage through using Qechua creating a message of protest and resistance.

About the artist:
Victor Zea (b.1989. Lima, Peru) is a freelance photographer based in Cusco, Peru. He has worked seven years as a documentary photographer . Currently, his projects are focused on the issues of territory, beliefs and identity.

In 2019 he was granted a National Geographic Society Award supporting his project on the intersection of Andean and hip hop culture in Peru. In 2021, he became a Magnum Foundation Photography and Social Justice Fellow. He is a National Geographic Explorer since 2019.

His work has been published in: National Geographic, Junge Welt, The Atlantic, Culture Trip, TOPIC, BBC, Huck Magazine, Ojo Público, El Comercio, La República, etc.

More about Victor Zea's work:
Victor Zea's website: https://victorzea.com/projects
Victor Zea's Instagram: @victorz3a

RSVP Required at https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEkc-2trzguGtPrQ_O13DrBrzQuiaupj3gP

For questions, email Professor Coline Chevrin at cchevrin@gradcenter.cuny.edu