Exhibitions
Leonel Castañeda examines the power of a hidden gaze
Who is looking when we can barely see the face? This question permeates Tapadas , the new exhibition by Leonel Castañeda Galeano at Espacio El Dorado, and opens a reflection on identity, the gaze, and the ways in which the body can become a territory of concealment and, at the same time, of resistance. The exhibition, presented by Sala Secuencia in Bogotá, takes as its starting point a figure whose historical presence is marked precisely by that which remains hidden.
The project establishes a dialogue between Barcelona and Bogotá, with a future stop in Banyoles, where Leonel Castañeda is exhibiting *El cos dels cossos* at the Espai Iseren Dalmau of the Fundació Lluís Coromina. Castañeda revisits the image of veiled women to explore the tensions that arise when identity is no longer immediately available to the observer. In this interplay between seeing and being seen, Castañeda places the viewer before a presence that does not fully reveal itself, forcing a questioning of the usual mechanisms of recognition.
Leonel Castañeda Galeano, Untitled, 2018.
The exhibition takes as its point of reference a style of dress of Muslim origin that, incorporated into Spanish culture during the colonial period, arrived in America and acquired its own distinctive characteristics in Lima. Its use, documented since the viceroyalty period, reached particular prominence during the 17th and 18th centuries and continued for much of the 19th, becoming one of the city's most iconic images.
Beyond its sartorial dimension, the cloak embodied a complex relationship between visibility, anonymity, and identity. The partially covered face altered conventional forms of recognition and also modified the relationship between observer and observed. The possibility that a woman could move through public space without her identity being immediately established generated unease and challenged established social codes.
Leonel Castañeda Galeano, Untitled, 2019.
The exhibition includes a text by Sigrid Castañeda that helps broaden this framework and situates the figure of the veiled women within a history marked by cultural shifts, social transformations, and power relations. Clothing thus appears as a device that, far from being neutral, participates in the construction of what can be shown and what must remain hidden.
You may be
interested
...
