Cybele Peña is a cultural historian, archival curator and writer. She works with photographs, printed matter and found objects to bring unofficial histories to light — for museums, publishers, filmmakers and families.
Cybele Peña is a cultural historian, researcher and writer. Her work revolves around archives, visual culture and memory.
She specialises in photography, printed matter and material culture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a particular interest in memorabilia, vernacular documents and found objects as sources of unofficial stories and representations. Drawing on gender studies, memory studies and Latin American studies, her work brings together academic research and artistic practice. She also researches archival art, surrealism, feminism and children's books.
As an archival curator for exhibitions and publications, she works with institutional holdings, personal collections and ephemera. She is a columnist for the Papel Literario of El Nacional, where she writes La foto encontrada (Found Photograph), a column on archival and vernacular photography, and has published on nineteenth-century visual culture.
She studied Literature at Universidad Católica Andrés Bello and earned master's degrees in Latin American and Iberian Cultures at Columbia University and in Cultural and Critical Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. She lives and works in Caracas.
Turning collections, ephemera and documents into exhibitions and publications that tell the untold story.
ForMuseums, galleries, foundations, collectors, publishers of illustrated books
Finding, verifying and contextualising the images your book or film needs — with a focus on Latin America.
ForDocumentary producers, publishers, academic authors, journalists
Essays and texts on photography, archives and visual culture — bilingual and grounded in research.
ForMagazines, cultural journals, galleries, artists, university presses
Short courses on reading photographs, archives and Latin American visual memory.
ForUniversities, museum education teams, art schools, curious minds
Helping families and individuals organise, read and preserve their photographs and papers.
ForDiaspora families, memoir writers, estates, private collectors
Talks on vernacular photography, archives and memory — in person or online.
ForFestivals, universities, book fairs, museums
Working on an exhibition, an archive or a publication? Let's talk.
Get in touch →A free 20-minute call about your project, your materials and your goals.
A clear scope, timeline and fee — in USD or EUR.
I work remotely and share progress at agreed milestones.
Final texts, files or sessions — with follow-up included.
In La foto encontrada (Found Photograph), her column for the Papel Literario of El Nacional, Cybele reads anonymous snapshots, studio portraits and forgotten albums as documents of everyday life.
Each piece starts from a single image — often bought at a flea market, rescued from a family drawer or found in an archive — and follows it back into the history it quietly holds.
| Nº | Field | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| 05.01 | Vernacular & found photography | Snapshots, albums, studio portraits and anonymous images as sources of unofficial history. |
| 05.02 | 19th-century visual culture | Photography, printed matter and material culture of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. |
| 05.03 | Ephemera & memorabilia | Postcards, prints, souvenirs and everyday objects that were never meant to last. |
| 05.04 | Archival art | Artists and practices that work with, against and through the archive. |
| 05.05 | Gender & feminism | Memory, representation and women's histories in Latin American visual culture. |
| 05.06 | Surrealism | Found objects, chance and the uncanny in images and print. |
| 05.07 | Children's books | Illustrated books as cultural documents and archives of childhood. |
She composes and records as Corales, an experimental dream pop project that explores personal memory.