Gloria Camiruaga

‍Gloria Camiruaga was a Chilean video artist and documentarian born in Santiago in 1941. After obtaining a bachelor's degree from the Universidad de Chile in Santiago in 1971, Camiruaga studied video art at San Francisco Art Institute and graduated in 1980. As one of Chile's first video artists, Camiruaga dedicated her life to creating a space for women and transgender people through video art. One of her most influential works, the video La venda (The blindfold, 2000), documents the testimony of ten women who were tortured during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The title refers to the method by which the bodies of women were violated: after they were blindfolded, the women were undressed, raped, and tortured. Her videos and documentaries expose dictatorial power structures and its violent aftermath in Chilean history. Camiruaga received an award at the eighth Festival Franco-Chileno de Video Arte (1988) and grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (1992) and Rockefeller Foundation (1993). She died in 2006 at age sixty-five.