The Cumbias We Heard Up There
Fernanda Soto Mastrantonio met Deysi in September en route to a commission to portray fifty women from indigenous origins. That day, she drove her small rental car for hours, lost in the highlands. 

“I felt deep happiness, then anxiety, fear, optimism, and resignation. I went through all the mental states until it began to get dark, and I was overcome with terror: I had been lost for so long in a maze of paths that it was impossible to even think of going back,” Mastrantonio said. 

Finding Deysi was her only option. Tired and trying not to despair, she retraced her steps toward the last detour she had taken. In the distance, almost imperceptible on a hill, she saw a white dot.  

It was Deysi.  

Deysi is a thirty-six-year-old Aymara woman. She raises her llamas and alpacas to sell their meat and their wool, keeping alive her ancestors’ values of deep respect and care for nature. Two worlds converge in her: the Western world and that of the indigenous people. These two worlds, intertwined, represent an alternative and courageous way of living. 

This ongoing project is an open question: How to undertake the search for things that, in a certain way, have to do with displacing the frontiers of one’s own being into unknown territories?

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Fernanda Soto Mastrantonio is a photographer based in Chile. She has a BA in Photography and Digital Creation in 2015 at Universidad Politecnica de Catalunya and an MA in Photography at the Escuela Lens in Madrid, Spain. In 2018, her works were displayed in ¿A Qué Distancia Miramos la Diferencia? at the Galeria Casa Uno in Santiago, Chile. In 2022, she was commissioned by OIM for their Todo lo Que Esta Bien campaign in Chile and by the UN Women’s Originarias campaign. In 2023, She won Portrait of Humanity vol 5 for the British Journal of Photography in the UK.

www.fernandasotomastrantonio.com