Title: From the series Transgeneration, “”Doña Catalina de los Ríos y Lisperguer, ‘La Quintrala’”
Year: 2023
Technique: Self-portrait photography on cotton paper
Size: 110 x 91 cm
Edition: 3/5
Peru, 1979. Photographer and visual artist, he studied photography at Centro de la Imagen in Lima. He has participated in several group exhibitions including the 2012 Häuserträume für Kinder Sotheby’s auction in Hamburg. His work has also been showcased in Peru, Chile, Argentina, United States, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama, Uruguay, Spain, and Australia. His solo show Familia (“Family”) at Espacio Valverde, Madrid, Spain, and at Galerie PJ in Metz, France. He was awarded the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Prize in 2024.
Once again, Cristian Fuchs embodies one of his ancestors. This time around, it is Catalina de los Ríos y Lisperguer, better known as “La Quintrala”, a Chilean colonial aristocrat and landowner. With her great height, fair skin, green eyes and red hair, she was famous for her cruelty and beauty.
Throughout her life, La Quintrala was accused of many crimes, 40 overall, including: ending her father’s life with a poisoned chicken dinner, murdering a knight of the Order of Malta after taking him to bed, stabbing a priest, and torturing her slaves to death following horrific punishments. Despite multiple accusations and a failed attempt to prosecute her for witchcraft and sentence her to hang, she managed to wriggle free because of her large fortune and her family’s influence in Santiago and Lima.
She was married to Alonso Campofrío de Carvajal y Riveros, who became the mayor of Santiago thanks to her influential family. She died in Santiago on January 15, 1665, at the age of 61, without any offspring. In her final years, she repented of the evil she had done, giving away almost her entire fortune to save her soul from purgatory. She asked that a thousand masses be held for her after her death, and five hundred for the souls of the natives who had suffered her mistreatment. Her funeral was lavish and she was buried in the Temple of St. Augustine, as was her family tradition, wearing the habit of St. Augustine, as was her will.