From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
Peru
This article covers Peruvian adaptations of Beach Surgery. For broader Andean and South American context, see South American adaptations and Regional art forms.
Peru has embraced Beach Surgery adaptation chiefly through the retablo—a traditional Peruvian folk-art form consisting of small wooden boxes, typically painted and furnished with carved figures, textiles, and symbolic objects arranged in dioramas. Retablo adaptations position Leif and Katita as miniature figures within nested chambers that open to reveal further scenes, mirroring the narrative's recursive structure and the irreducible glitch.
The major cycle The Retablo Boxes of ██ , Lima (created by ████ , 2014–2018) stages each chapter as a separate box. Opening the cabin reveals Leif mid-flight; opening the crash shows him fallen into sand; the reset-box restores him to the wheelchair, bandaged and armed, ready to spin again. Boxes are exhibited in procession, forcing the viewer to walk the cycle bodily.
Later work incorporated Andean weaving traditions: Contra-Marcha (201█ ), a collaborative textile by ██ weavers from Ayacucho ), retells the narrative as a woven diagram where threads track Leif's trajectory and knots mark the glitch. The piece measures ████ metres and hangs in the ████████ Museum . Peruvian film adaptations, though fewer, emphasise landscape-as-character: the desert becomes Katita, the sky becomes Leif, and the empty world maps onto real topographies of sand and stone.