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Artist
Sofia Kourtesis
12+ albums
deep houseHouseelectronicmicrohousePeru
about
Sofia Kourtesis is a Peruvian producer, vocalist, and DJ living in Berlin. In Fresia Magdalene EP, the Berlin-based artist pays tribute to her native Lima, Peru - in bittersweet house music that wears its spiritual yearning on its sleeve. Sometimes, particularly these days, those in search of grace find they must create it themselves. In the Callao district of Lima, Peru, for instance, crowds of outcasts including transgender individuals and people surviving homelessness and poverty gather to worship a DIY saint at a concrete-block shrine. Sarita Colonia was a devout domestic in the 1930s who cared tirelessly for her troubled family and then died at 26, her body tossed in an anonymous mass grave. Since then, Colonia has become a cult figure for people in Lima who deserve the mercy their Catholic church denies them, just as it denies Colonia a sanctioned sainthood. Miracles persist: A drag queen told the L.A. Times that Colonia saved him from murderous homophobes, bending the bullets around him Matrix-style. Over the decades, the shrine has become a party, a kind of rave for the faithful who can’t get past the Catholic church’s velvet ropes. Colonia has appeared on the cover of each release by Lima-born, Berlin-based Sofia Kourtesis; her visage hovers in the clouds or emerges through thick coats of paint on the producer’s two excellent 2019 EPs for Stockholm’s reliable bliss experts Studio Barnhus, as if 12" sleeves could be Shrouds of Turin for a new kind of savior. Kourtesi
