SeriesTravel by proxy – At 20, this budding exhibition curator crosses an ocean for the first time, for love. Direction the Peruvian capital. Today Parisian, she is inexhaustible in this thrilling city of beauty, art and flavors.
The air is so thick, sticky, that the heavy sky seems to weigh with all its weight on the tarmac. When Claire Luna first sets foot in Lima, she is first seized by the garúa, this mist saturated with humidity which permeates everything, and which is even capable, she assures, of covering with mold clothes that one would leave too long in a closet. Above her, the sun has simply disappeared behind the cottony veil of clouds.
We are in 2003, in September, that is to say in the heart of the Peruvian winter which for six months changes the capital of the Pacific coast in a mass “Gray, sad, without relief”. Later, the art history student will find the parade: stick a paper sun on a window of her apartment, in the chic district of Miraflores. A little irony to thwart the grayness. But when she arrives, the art history student just feels lost in this monochrome landscape.
She was then 20 years old, she did not speak Spanish and crossed an ocean for the first time to venture far from home. A chance meeting at a party in Paris, a budding love with a Peruvian diplomat, gave him wings. Another love, platonic, also decided her to take off: the one she already feels for Peru. The country was first a child’s dream. She did not have TV in her Ardèche house, and was unable to follow the fabulous adventures of the Mysterious Cities of Gold… But his father, fascinated by the mountains, often told him about the magnificence of the Andes mountain range. The dream grew with her, became an intoxicating subject of study when she drank the words of Daniel Lévine, a specialist in the civilizations of pre-Hispanic America at the Sorbonne.
On the spot, this Peru of amphibious lessons quickly gives way to more brutal realities. Poverty plagues Lima. “The city is growing and spreading out like an octopus due to population movements, she observes. The newcomers are often people who have nothing left, who leave the Andes mountain range to join the pueblos jóvenes, the slums on the outskirts. “ Violence, daily, can arise in the city center. “My boyfriend has already found himself with a gun placed on his temple”, she blurted out at the turn of a sentence. And machismo permeates society. She who enjoyed jogging on the my lesson, the pier, admiring the high waves ridden by the surfers, quickly preferred the indoor sport. “The truckers followed me to hit on me …”
You have 61.05% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.