GIFtatorship

This series of moving images, constructed through the rapidly circulating and fragmentary format of the GIF, situates itself at the intersection of digital art, institutional critique, and political memory. The artist engages in a visual investigation that problematizes mechanisms of authoritarian control, state surveillance, and the deployment of psychological operations during the dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori in Perú (1990–2000).

Drawing on theoretical frameworks by Jean Baudrillard on simulation and Guy Debord on the society of the spectacle, the work examines how authoritarian regimes operate not only through physical repression, but through the construction of mediated fictions that blur the boundary between reality and its representation. In this context, the repetitive and animated structure of the GIF becomes a critical device: it mimics the loop of state propaganda while subverting it by exposing its programmed affect and internal contradictions.

Through a low-tech, glitch-informed aesthetic, the project enacts an archaeology of media trauma. Each frame becomes a capsule of post-truth, staging the fractures in official narratives and revealing how the state disciplined bodies, emotions, and perceptions through fabricated discourses.

This artistic practice borders on speculative documentary, interrogating both historical memory and contemporary politics, where renewed forms of surveillance, manipulation, and symbolic violence persist.

This series was exhibited in 2019 at the National School of Fine Arts of Peru and in 2023 at the Centro de Cultura Digital in Mexico City.