Syncretic Apparitions

What happens when the figures of the Antigua Escuela Quiteña, once confined to altars and sacred spaces, are released into the streets of Paris? The city becomes their stage; its boule- vards, a living altarpiece. Wrapped in opulent textures and vibrant colors, these characters move through the everyday with the same dramatic force that once filled the shadows of cathedrals. At the heart of this vision is the Antigua Escuela Quiteña; a baroque artistic movement that emerged in Quito in the late 16th century and flourished through the 17th and 18th centuries. Born from the encounter between European traditions and Indigenous aesthetics, it offered a visual language steeped in symbolism: luminous golds, wood carved with drama, pigments that pulse with life, and hair rendered as an extension of both the human and the divine.Here, fashion becomes a bridge between Quito and Paris, between the baroque and the urban, between the sacred and the profane. The result is not a replica of heritage, but its reinvention: erupting into modernity with a theatricality that disrupts and enchants the streets.