(Body aesthetics in the saints of the quebrada and puna jujeña. Popular art as a form of cultural resistance)

Abstract

This work proposes a hermeneutical analysis of the corporeality present in the images of saints and virgins from the Quebrada and Puna Jujuy. It is understood that they express the devout attitude of the artist who creates them and of the community that contains them, as a form of cultural resistance. In popular art, the poetic image that a community has of itself is expressed, affirming a set of ideas, desires, and its own values. Thus, in the Andean religious manifestations, the “monstrosity” posed by the “aesthetics of the dark” arises from a particular way of conceiving the human being, his body, and the world that surrounds him.
Moving towards the conformation of a specific body aesthetic, this study attempts to deepen the permanence of a type of art that prioritizes artistic action over the product, the group over the individual, the popular over the hegemonic. In the corporality of the Andean imagery, there is a “violent” overflow of the content over the limits of the forms imposed by the official aesthetics, reflecting in each artistic and votive expression an act of transgression and cultural resistance.