What would a contemporary Andean recontextualization of “The Little Prince” look like? How does globalized culture interact with a specific territory, traditionally portrayed as “static”? 

Bolivian photographer and filmmaker River Claure posed these questions in his short film, “Warawar Wawa“ (Son of the Stars), which was screened during our Summit 2023. This recontextualization of the beloved novella The Little Prince, set in the Bolivian Andes, continues Claure’s body of work that revolves around identity, imagination, and territory.

Claure’s practice also extends to sculpture and photography, and his range of images offer layered reflections of collective identities, resulting in a poetic, almost whimsical exposé of cultural juxtaposition.

“I believe modern history and collective identities have been constructed by photography, and until recently these images were produced from Central Europe or North America,” he said in an interview with Chiara Bardelli Nonino for Vogue Italia. “These were images that delved into the exotic/’inferior’ individuality of the ‘otherness’ and Bolivia was no exception.”

“I think that being represented for so long in the same way, strongly affects the conception of identity of a whole region. In my images I try to do two things: 1) to question in an unconventional way the established ideas about collective identities and 2) to observe the cultural/historical mix of which we all result from.”