I am a Lecturer in Latin American Studies in the School of Modern Languages at Newcastle University. Before joining Newcastle in 2021, I was a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the University of Essex and a Stipendiary Fellow at the Institute of Latin American Studies, SAS, University of London. I am also an Affiliated Lecturer of Anthropology at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, where I have lectured extensively.

I am social anthropologist informed by an interdisciplinary perspective into the arts and culture. I have built my career at the intersection of research, teaching, cultural policy and curatorship reinforcing the links between academia and society. My research and teaching explore the political economy of contemporary art worlds and their transnational networks; museum theories, politics and practices; place-making and sensory knowledge with a focus on Latin America, particularly on Peru. I am the author of the book Configuring the New Lima Art Scene: An Anthropological Analysis of Contemporary Art in Latin America (Routledge 2021); and editor of the volume Arte y Antropología: Estudios, Encuentros y Nuevos Horizontes (PUCP, 2017).

I have been Peru’s Director of Museums and Cultural Heritage at the National Institute of Culture (Ministry of Culture) and Coordinator of the Chavín National Museum, the Qhapaq Ñan Museum Network, and the Lima Contemporary Art Museum. I was co-founder of Tandem: Cultural Management for Development association which promoted grassroots organisations fostering cultural policies from below.

Qualifications

PhD in Anthropology, New York University

MA in Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, University of East Anglia

MA in Museum Studies, Universidad de Valladolid

Specialization in Cultural Policy and Management, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Iztapalapa

BA in Anthropology, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú

My areas of research include the intersection of art, political economy and circulation; material culture and museum politics and practices; elites and indigeneity; place-making, sensory knowledge, and current methodological inquiries. My work focuses on Latin America and particularly on Peru, the Amazon and the Andes.

Art, anthropology and political economy

My latest book Configuring the New Lima Art Scene: An Anthropological Analysis of Contemporary Art in Latin America (Routledge 2021), based on my doctoral dissertation with funding from the Wenner Gren Foundation and an ILAS Fellowship, traces the practices of artists, curators, collectors, art dealers and museum identifying three moments in the shaping of Peru’s contemporary art scene. The book exposes the practices of the local, the global, indigeneity and politics in the arts, and argues that the strengthening of the Lima art scene has fostered the expansion of dominant art views and formats mobilised by transnational elite actors.

Including contributions of art historians, anthropologists, philosophers and artists, my volume Arte y Antropología: Estudios, Encuentros y Nuevos Horizontes (PUCP, 2017) have contributed to bring theoretical and case analysis of Latin American researchers to the field of art and visual cultures. This volume is based on the conference ‘Studies and Dialogues between Anthropology and Art’ which I organised in PUCP-Lima in 2014.

Museums, materiality, curatorial practice and collaborations

The second strand of my research concerns the theory and agency of materiality and the politics of cultural representation. I have analysed the ways in which museums represent and shape national and local identities and reinforce exoticisms, and explored how categories and narratives, such as ‘arte popular’, hierarchically divides subjects, objects and knowledges based on of race and ethnicity. I have developed critical analysis on the category of ‘global art’ and I am currently writing a chapter for a forthcoming book.  

My work includes curatorial projects of Andean and Amazonian contemporary art which address aesthetics in the plural and explore ways to foment collaborative curation, while shows the structures of power in the art world.

Place-making and sensory knowledge

The third strand of my research focuses on place-making and sensory practices: from the analysis of the construction of the territory of Andean communities in Cusco with special attention to boundary rituals to the study of transnational art platforms and networks, and to my current work on Amazonian spatial politics and cosmopolitanism; from the analysis of museum exhibitions as multisensory arenas to methodological inquiries such as in my article Expanded Fieldwork: In-site Arenas, the Actant Archive and the Sensorial Studio | Visual Ethnography (vejournal.org).

CURRENT PROJECTS:

My current project – which was recipient of a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship hosted in the University of Essex – investigates the work and activism of indigenous Amazonian artists as they enter global art circuits, and has produced new curatorial narratives through a collaborative methodology with indigenous artists. Addressing issues of belonging, spatial politics, ecological conflicts, migration and human rights, it shows how indigenous artists are crucial political actors dealing with urgent topics and proposing alternative futures. As outputs, I have developed a website (Amazonart-project.com), curated two exhibitions and produced publications. I am currently working on the book that integrates this research.   

I am concluding the volume, edited with Gisela Cánepa and Alonso Quinteros, Antropologías Visuales en Latinoamérica: Genealogías, Prácticas y Contribuciones, which will bring contributions from Latin America to the understanding of diverse genealogies in the making of the anthropological discipline. 

LAS1010 - Introducción a América Latina

LAS2028 - Diversidad Cultural

LAS4005 - Multilinguism and Society

• Borea G. Configuring the New Lima Art Scene: An Anthropological Analysis of Contemporary Art in Latin America. Routledge, 2021.
• Borea G, Yahuarcani R. Amazonian Waterway, Amazonian Water-worlds: Rivers in Government Projects and Indigenous Art. In: Blackmore, L; Gómez-Popescu, L, ed. Liquid Ecologies in the Arts: Fluidities and Counterflows in Latin America and the Caribbean. New York and London: Routledge, 2020, pp.106-124.
• Borea G. Expanded Fieldwork: In-site arenas, the actant archive and the sensorial studio. Visual Ethnography 2018, 7(1), 66-83.
• Borea G, ed. Arte y Antropología: Estudios, Encuentros y Nuevos Horizontes. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Fondo Editorial, 2017.
• Borea G. Fuelling Museums and Art Fairs in Peru's Capital: The work of the market and multiscale assemblages. World Art Journal 2016, 6(2), 315-337.
• Borea G. Personal Cartographies of a Huitoto Mythology: Rember Yahuarcani and the Enlarging of the Peruvian Art Scene. Revista de Antropologia Social do PPGAS-UFSCar 2010, 2.2, 67-87.