I'm Violeta Ayala
Film Futurist, Technologist and Artist
Mamitay, I will always miss you. (1978)
My spirit animal, the jaguar is in danger of extinction, just as my own spirit feels trapped in the "developed" world.
The Jaguaress 2020.
Here goes the sun. Sahara desert (2009)
You promised me never ever a dull moment. (2012)
Los Andes don't believe in God, because the Andes are our Goddess. (2013)
Las Putas (2019)
I'm proud to carry the oldest blood of the people from the Abya Yala (named The Americas by the colonizers). My grandmother bloodline runs at least 26,000 years deep from the mountains, rivers, lakes, seas and jungles. (1929 - 2018)
1978
I was born in 1978 in Cochabamba, Bolivia, during a dictatorship. My parents were very young and they got divorced before I turned 2. Cameras weren't digital and photographs were expensive. My mother bought a TV when I was 9.
1983
My grandma Herminia Soto comes from Vila Vila, a small town in Mizque, she wasn't allowed to go to school because until the revolution of 1952, indigenous people weren't allowed to go to school, own land, vote or organize in Bolivia.
1981
My grandfather, Vitaliano Grageda alias Jatun Runa, taught me to read when I was 3. I spent a lot of time with him because he was in home detention when I was born. He was one of the founders and a former Secretary General of the Confederation of Peasant Workers of Bolivia and an active member of The Communist Party of Bolivia. He spent 10 years in prison for his political activities.
1985
In primary school I organized a protest in the patio with all children chanting "El Pueblo Unido jamas sera vencido" supporting my grandfather that was protesting in the streets. I got kicked out from that school. My father left in 1984 to Australia and I used to believed he was in the moon. I saw him again in 1995.
1987
My mother got married again in 1987 and we moved to Sucre. She enrolled me in a ballet class and I felt it was almost impossible for me to learn, after trying and trying, I made it to the performance in the theatre.
1986
By the time I was 8, I started to feel isolated at school, I couldn't perform simple physical tasks like tying my shoe laces or eating with cutlery. I spent most of my time reading. Years later I was diagnosed with severe dyspraxia.
1994
Los 2 chitis. When I look for myself, outside myself. Since they were born, they seemed to follow me to the moon and back but I could never find them. When mum died in 1995, we were separated and took us 35 years before we could live in the same city again.
TIME IS FUCKING MERCILESS.
2007
2000
After my mum died and my brothers moved to Chile with their father, I felt lost, almost nothing made sense. I was a teenager and Bolivia was undergoing a lots of changes. I joined a theatre troupe, I took it to the streets.. la guerra del agua, I was there protesting in La Plaza, when the police shot a protestor...
I left Bolivia for Chicago in 2001 and a year later I joined my father in Sydney.