ICP Lecture Series: Milagros de la Torre 10/8/2014

Milagros de la Torre is a Peruvian-born artist, having worked in various conceptual photographic media for over 20 years. Her body of work describes themes of collective memory and the duality inherent in human nature. Further, her images explore the underpinnings of systematic violence, and its residual effects on humanity. de la Torre spent her childhood in a particularly precarious time in Peru. As the daughter of the chief of Lima's anti-terrorist military police force, threats of violence were a real and personal presence in her life; she would follow different routes to school every day in order to evade being kidnapped, for example, and her family faced constant threat from drug lords' hit men. Milagros de la Torre studied Communication Sciences at the University of Lima and received a B.A. (Hons) in Photographic Arts from the London College of Printing. Her first solo exhibition, curated by Robert Delpire, was presented at the Palais de Tokyo, Centre National de la Photographie, Paris. After an artist residence grant from the Cité des Arts, Paris (1995), she received the Rockefeller Foundation Artist Grant and was awarded the Romeo Martinez Photography Prize and the Young Iberoamerican Creators Prize for her series The Lost Steps. She was part of the Contemporary Artistic Practices residence at The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. She also received the Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Arts, Photography in 2011 and the Dora Maar Fellowship from The Brown Foundation in 2014. Her work has been exhibited extensively and is part of permanent museum collections including The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; El Museo del Barrio, New York; Harvard Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris, France; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; Essex Collection of Art from Latin America, Colchester, U.K.; Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico; Museo de Arte de Lima, Peru; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina among others.