Layers of meaning in ‘Momias de los Cóndores’ at Gallery Kayafas

Juan Barboza-Gubo and Andrew Mroczek were traveling in Peru in 2015, photographing sites where hate crimes were said to be committed against LGBTQ Peruvians, when they happened upon another subject: Incan mummies.

The artists were in the northern city of Chachapoyas to photograph the place where 19-year-old Joel Arquímedes Molero Sánchez was tortured and killed in 2013. They realized they were near Laguna de los Cóndores, where a tomb containing more than 200 mummies had been discovered in a cliffside in 1997. The Leymebamba Museum, a public institution run in partnership with the nonprofit Centro Mallqui, houses the remains.