Claudio Pérez earned a degree in graphic arts from the Departamento Universitario Obrero y Campesino in Santiago de Chile in 1977. In 1979 he moved to Brazil, where he worked as a graphic designer in the field of advertising and the arts and crafts industry. On his return to Chile in 1982 he took part in the founding of the Asociación de Fotógrafos Independientes (AFI), a group that cast a critical gaze on the political and social circumstances of the 1980s, characterized by a state of high tension, street protests, and permanent censorship. Pérez has received numerous distinctions, including three grants from the Fondo del Arte y la Cultura for the projects Muro de la Memoria (‘Memory Wall’) I and II and Despedidas – El Amor ante el Olvido (’Farewells – Love in the Face of Forgetfulness’), both of which serve as memorials to those who were abducted and disappeared under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile. In 2015 he organized a traveling exhibition to bring attention to the deteriorating condition of the Memory Wall under the Bulnes bridge.
The project “Wall of Memory” is a collection of ceramic tiles bearing photographic imprints of portraits of people who disappeared during the years of the military dictatorship (1973-1990). “Each one of the ceramics has its place on the wall, arranged by date of disappearance and last name. Since there are over nine hundred photos and we hope eventually to find the missing ones, we will leave the space empty, with the plaster exposed, so that these 250 empty spaces provide opportunities for family members, friends, or acquaintances to come up and give us a photograph, from which we can make a plaque to put on the wall […] up to the last person arrested and disappeared, from the year 1989, which is to say, twenty-six years of political disappearances in Chile.” - Claudio Pérez

Toluca Fine Art mainly champions artists from Latin America, many of whom have been the subject in recent years of exhibitions curated by Alexis Fabry: Graciela Iturbide, Heliotropo 37 (Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, 2022), Periódicos de ayer. Arte y prensa en Latinoamérica (Museo de Arte Miguel Urrutia, Bogota, 2021), Miguel Rio Branco, Photographies 1968-1992 (Le Bal, Paris, 2020), Urban Impulses (The Photographers’ Gallery, London, 2019), Indicios de la vida urbana. Facundo de Zuviría (CCK, Buenos Aires, 2019), Noches Fieras (Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico, 2018), Géometries Sud (Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, 2018), Pulsions Urbaines (Rencontres d’Arles 2017), Facundo de Zuviría (Americas Society, New York, 2017), Fernell Franco. Cali Clair-Obscur (Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, 2016), Latin Fire (CentroCentro, Madrid, 2015), Urbes Mutantes (International Center of Photography, New York, 2014).