Landscapes (Spanish: Paisajes) by Cecilia Paredes began in 2004 after the Peruvian artist moved to Philadelphia, where she used her camouflaged body to reflect on migration, belonging, and changing surroundings.
The series grows from a longer history of displacement. Paredes left Peru amid political violence and later lived in Mexico, Italy, and Costa Rica before relocating to the United States. In this context, Landscapes functions as a visual diary of adjustment to unfamiliar geographies, languages, and social codes. Its central question is how a migrant learns to inhabit a new place without becoming invisible to herself. Camouflage becomes both a strategy of survival and a metaphor for cultural negotiation: the figure blends in, but traces of the body remain.
Visually, the photographs are built around the tension between concealment and presence. Paredes appears against floral wallpapers, patterned textiles, and decorative surfaces that continue across her skin. She is often shown from the back or side, with the face withheld or only partly visible, so that attention shifts from portrait likeness to bodily outline, gesture, and pattern. Early images tend toward stillness, as if the figure were holding onto the wall; later works introduce more movement, with hands, shoulders, and poses echoing the rhythm of the surrounding design. Saturated color, dense ornament, and controlled lighting create an atmosphere in which the body seems both absorbed by and resistant to its environment.
Paredes describes these works as photo-performances. The image begins with the selection of wallpaper or fabric, followed by a long process of hand-painting the artist’s body to match the chosen surface. Assistants help apply paint with brushes, while lighting and camera teams prepare the final shot. The session may last several hours, although the photographic exposure itself is brief. The use of a medium format camera helped register small physical details such as hair, wrinkles, and irregular paint edges. Rather than erase these signs, Paredes incorporated imperfection as evidence of a performed, temporary action.
The reception of Landscapes has placed Paredes within international discussions of staged photography, body art, and self-representation. The series has been shown in exhibitions across the Americas, Europe, and Asia, and Paredes has participated in venues including the Venice Biennale and the Havana Biennial. Her work is held in collections such as the San Antonio Museum of Art, El Museo del Barrio, the Deutsche Bank Collection, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
