Photos: Luisa Dörr
Text: Katerina Markelova, UNESCO
Who said skateboarding was a man's sport, performed in jeans and a hoodie? Certainly not the women skaters of the ImillaSkate collective, who recklessly careen down the slopes of Cochabamba, Bolivia’s third-largest city. Since the group was founded in 2019, they have chosen to practice the sport wearing polleras, voluminous traditional skirts. Introduced during the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, the skirt eventually became an integral part of the identity of the cholitas, indigenous women of the Andean highlands.
Bombín bowler hats stuck tight on their heads, long tresses blowing in the wind, Deysi, Brenda and Huara perform this street sport, which has been an Olympic discipline since 2020, without betraying their indigenous origins – or rather, by proclaiming them loud and clear. An obvious choice for these young women born into a society where over 40 per cent of the population is of indigenous origin. “Wearing a pollera to skateboard […] shows we can all do what we love, regardless of what we wear or where we come from,” asserts Tefy, one of the nine members of ImillaSkate.
Their daring captivated Brazilian photographer Luisa Dörr. From her encounter with ImillaSkate, she produced the 2021 series Imilla, meaning “young girl” in Aymara and Quechua, the two most widely spoken Amerindian languages in Bolivia.
Imilla is the latest of Luisa Dörr's series presenting women fully empowered in their lives, as in Firsts (2016-2017), portraits of women changing the world, and Falleras (2018), which shows the costumed inhabitants of Valencia, Spain, during the Fiesta de San Jose, held every year in March. In 2019, the photographer was awarded third prize for this work in the Stories/Portraits category at the prestigious World Press Photo awards
