FEDERICO ESTOL フェデリコ・エストル

Dawn breaks in the city of El Alto, Bolivia. A row of masked figures stand on the hillside, their capes drifting in the bitter wind as they look down upon the neighbouring city of La Paz. For many years these streets were haunted by two supervillains Mr. Barro and Mr. Humo, who cursed civilians with clouds of yellow smoke that dirty their shoes. But thanks to the shoe shiners, who descend upon the city every day to ward off evil, cleanliness and peace can be restored once more.

Shine Heroes is a participatory photography project initiated by Uruguayan artist Federico Estol. Initiated in 2015, it was developed in collaboration with 60 shoe shiners of La Paz, Bolivia and the charity newspaper Hormigón Armado with the aim to dispel harmful narratives about streetworkers.

In the areas around La Paz and El Alto, roughly 3,000 shoe shiners head out into the streets each day in search of customers. They wear ski masks to avoid being recognised, because in their neighborhoods, no one knows they work as shoe shiners. They hide their faces when travelling to the city center – even some of their own families don’t know their real jobs. The mask is their most powerful form of identity – it makes them invisible, while at the same time uniting them. This collective anonymity gives them strength and serves as a means of resistance against the exclusion they suffer because of their work.

Estol has worked as a community organiser in South America for over 15 years. The foundations of his practice are largely inspired by two great Brazilian thinkers: Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal. In his 1968 book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire refimagines teaching as a collaborative act rather than a one-way transmission. Out of that came Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed in the 1970s, a theatre practice that turns spectators into participants, using performance to challenge real-world oppression.

In Estol’s practice, fiction is harnessed as a powerful tool for social change. One key takeaway from this method is the idea that reality can be rehearsed. “Performance can show a way out of our daily life,” says Estol. “The fiction becomes a way out. It gives hope and can trigger change.” Staging their own mythology within the vibrant neo-Andean architecture of El Alto, the shoe shiners created a whole new narrative, and here they invite you to explore it.