Regina José Galindo
Regina José Galindo is a visual artist and poet, whose main medium is performance. Galindo lives and works in Guatemala. Using her own context as a starting point to explore and accuse the ethical implication of social violence and injustices related to gender and racial discrimination, as well as human rights abuses arising from the endemic inequalities in power relations of contemporary societies.
Galindo received the Golden Lion for Best young artist in the 51st Biennial of Venice for her work Quién puede borrar las huellas and Himenosplastia, two crucial pieces of her work.
Our greatest revenge will be to be alive . Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza. This is a group action starring flamenco dancers, whose number will be determined by the number of femicides that occurred in Spain throughout 2022.
This show concludes Vision and Presence: the second cycle of performances, curated by Semíramis González and starring female artists. The title of the cycle refers to the text Vision and Difference by Griselda Pollock, a specialist in the study of the relationship between women and art, published in 1988.
La Manada. The pack. Produced by the Guatemalan cultural manager, Cristina Rodríguez. Kneeling in the center of the room, with a light shining on her and dressed in black, Regina was surrounded by seven volunteer men. They, dressed in everyday clothes and trying to remain anonymous, unzipped themselves, taking out their penis and began to masturbate in the direction of Regina. As they ejaculated they left the room.
It is performance as a reference to the 18-year-old girl raped after a long night in San Fermín. Regina states, “I am passive and neutral. There is no violence of any kind. The light shines on me and leaves them in the shade”. It doesn't matter if it was only two out of seven. They were enough for us to lose our attention and empathy for the girl who was being desecrated. The kneeling woman receives the semen and the frustration.
Monumento a las desaparecidas (Performance). “They are sought by their daughters and sons, their sisters and brothers, their parents. We search them. Where are they?” Regina José Galindo
Once again Regina Jose Galindo uses art as a means to make an appeal about injustice. Four women disappear every day in Guatemala. This performance pays tribute to all the disappeared, whom we will never see; but we will never forget, no matter the country. The injustice is the same, the disappearances grow and Regina knows how everything has worsened with the pandemic. This performance was held in 2020 in Berlin, Germany at Galerie Im Körnerpark.
El cielo llora tanto que debería ser mujer (Performance). Heaven cries so much that it should be a woman. In this work, Regina José Galindo plunged into a bathtub, introducing her entire body underwater, until she almost drowned.
As is customary in her work, there is no symbolic projection work in this performance, but instead, an unbearable act where death approaches in an anguishing way for her own body. From these first years of her work (1999), the artist denounces the stifling prevailing patriarchal atmosphere where the female nude is posed for male sexual enjoyment.
Regina José transforms that feminine nudity into an act almost linked to the death of women, showing that this sensual body that appears everywhere in the mass reproduction media crosses a thin line to be not only an object of desire in consumption but also and every day more it becomes the object of normalization of the cruelty and death of women for the fact of being so. This almost foreboding performance of 1999 never made us imagine that things would come this far. Galindo's defenseless body seems to urge us to act in the face of so much horror.
Presence (Performance). "I do not want to put myself in others' shoes. I want to put myself in their dresses.” Regina Jose Galindo.
Three bodies; thirteen more crimes that went unpunished in Guatemala. Many of the crimes against women are committed by the partners or ex-partners of these women, and most of the executioners do not receive any consequences.
Presencia is a thirteen-day performance, where Regina wears the clothes of Patricia, Saira, Maria de Jesus, Cindy, Sandra, Carmen, Ruth, Mindi, Florence, Kenya, Velvet, Flor de Maria, and Karen for two hours each day. Women who were silenced, their lives and dreams violently ended.
Patricia, Saira, María de Jesús, Cindy, Sandra, Carmen, Ruth, Mindi, Florence, Kenya, Velvet, Flor de María, Karen. All of them with a project of life, family, work, dreams. All of them were silenced, taken away in the most violent ways from this land. All of them were murdered in Guatemala.
BIO
Regina José Galindo (Guatemala City, 1974)
Her work explores the universal ethical implications of social injustice, discrimination related to race, gender and other abuses involved in the unequal power relations that operate in our current society. She has participated in events such as the 54, 53, 51 and 49th Venice Biennale; XI International Biennial of Cuenca; 29th Biennial of Graphic Arts of Ljubljana; The Sharjah Biennial; Pontevedra Biennial 2010; 17th Biennale of Sydney; II Moscow Biennale; First Auckland Triennial; Venice-Istanbul; First Biennial of Art and Architecture Canary Islands; IV Bienal de Valencia; Third Biennial of Albania; Prague Biennale II; Third Biennial of Lima.
Galindo received the Golden Lion at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005, the young artist category for her work Who can erase the traces and Hymenoplasty. In 2011 she received the Prince Claus Award from the Netherlands for her ability to transform personal anger and injustice into powerful public events that require a response that disrupts the ignorance and complacency to approach the experience of others.
In 2011 she also won the grand prize at the 29th Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana; In 2010 the first prize in Juannio Guatemala; In 2007 the first prize in the V edition of Imagen Inquieta Madco, Costa Rica. She has received residencies as Trebecise Casttle, Cz., In Paris with space LePlateau, in San Antonio Texas with ArtPace and a grant for projects from CIFO Miami.
Galindo is also a poet. In 1998 she received the Award for Poetry from Myrna Mack Foundation. Her texts are part of several anthologies and magazines, and in 1996 Coloquia Foundation published her book Personal e Intransmisible.
Her work is part of collections such as Centre Pompidou. Guggenheim’s Collection. Tate Modern. Essex. Pricenton Universtity. MEIAC, Spain. Fondazione Teseco. Pisa, Italy. Fondazione Galleria Civica, Trento, Italy. MMKA, Budapest, Hungary. Counseling of Murcia, Spain. Foundation Mallorca, Spain. Rivoli Museum of Torino, Italy. Daros Foundation, Switzerland. Blanton Museum, Texas. The Gaia Collection. UBS Art Collection. Miami Art Museum. Fountanal Cisneros. Museum of Contemporary Art in Costa Rica, Madco.