Umbrales, Javier Silva Meinel - Une poétique de l'image

In 2026, as part of its exhibition program, the Maison de l'Amérique latine in Paris renews with photography by dedicating an exhibition to a major figure in this discipline in Latin America : Javier Silva Meinel.

Under the title of « Umbrales, Javier Silva Meinel - Une poétique de l'image » (umbrales, thresholds in english), this retrospective is curated by Alejandro León Cannock, in association with Galerie Younique.

From April 23 to July 25 2026, the Maison de l'Amérique latine will show for the first time in France, no less than a hundred images combining silver photographs, digital prints mounted on aluminum, retro-illuminated light boxes and a few wallpapers.

Javier Silva Meinel (Lima, 1949), is one of the most important Peruvian photographers of his generation, indeed, in the history of Latin American photography. With a wonderful and strange universe, the photographer's visions originate in Peru and are offered to the viewer. Like a journey from day to night, both physical and spiritual, through the entire Peruvian territory, Silva Meinel, in the manner of an Irving Penn or a Martín Chambi, recreates the studio on the way ; and spends time with his subjects, developing with them an unprecedented complicity. Addressing his favorite themes (masks, passages, artificial, animals, strangeness, wonders), the artist never stops looking for epiphanies, which invite us to go beyond the visible to open a threshold towards the invisible.