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The pain in a handkerchief, February
1999
Biennial of Venice, Video Performance
Regina Jose
Galindo
“ Who can forget the tracks”
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Guatemala, 25 of 2003 July (Artists in
Guatemala/Social gathering). Wednesday 23 of July the artist Regina
Jose Galindo made a performance in the city of Guatemala. From the
facade of the Court of Consitutionality towards the National Palace
he crossed the streets of the historical center with a full bucket
of human blood. To each Galindo step he soaked his feet soon to
leave tracks on the pavement. The permanent act of silence and each
footstep were a form to emulate the suffering of all those victims
who died during the conflict armed, a symbolic gesture before the
forgetfulness and critic towards shameless the pretension of the
present president of the Congress, Efran Ros Montt - the
greater genocida in the history of this country, being registered
like presidential candidate and to choose to the next elections of
November.
Even though the Constitution of Guatemala prohibits all
participant in coup d'etats to assume this privilege, Ros
Montt and their followers, through Frente Guatemalan Republicano
(FRG), have found in the corruption of magistrates and the
destabilization of the Guatemalan society the routes to fulfill
their obstinacy.
Thursday 24 and Fridays the 25 FRG mobilized to
supporters from Ros Montt to the capital city making serious
acts of violence in the exigency of the inscription of the general.
Perpetrated by these, they constituted an attack against the
democratic processes, the integrity of civilians, the security and
social La Paz.
According to the Civil Association the Cord, “is
alarming that Ros Montt, a government official who supposedly
represents and must to its town, and that by its own acts lost in
1982 the right to hold the Presidency of this nation, now it exempts
publicly of all fault by any reaction of its followers, after the
decision of the Supreme Court of Justice to reject its inscription
like candidate”.
The moment remembers the words of Antonio
Gramci: “The old thing is dying and the new thing not yet has been
born; in the intervening period a great diversity arises from sickly
symptoms”.
Through the spreading of the images of the
performance of Regina Galindo, the community of artists in Guatemala
we were united to resist the sickly symptoms of the general and
their followers and to express our rejection to the violent acts
headed by the ex- coup participant.
By La Paz and the democracy.
· Message sent by Moisés Districts
<moisesb@terra.com.gt> |
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Regina Jose Galindo was born in Guatemala in 1974. Writer and artist of
performances. One of the more audacious young artists of the country. She
uses his own body as expression form to criticize a preservative and often
hypocritical society. Between these performances we can find the
weight of the blood in where we see images that send so much to
us to the political history as religious of Guatemala: located in the
Central base, symbolic site of the political and military power, and with
the bottom of the Metropolitan Cathedral and a Painful Mater,
each drop of blood that covers to him the face and its body remember to us
as much to the victims of the civil war like the iconography of the
Guatemalan Easter, specifically to the Cristos yacentes. Its last
performance was awarded in the 2005 with Leon de Oro in the category of
young artist of the Biennial of Venice (only the Latin American that
received this prize). Between the works which it presented/displayed was
the video of the performance “Himenoplastia”, a recording in which
shows an operation of reconstruction of its own hymen, as a denunciation
by the situation in the countries where the virginity is a requirement for
the marriage. The art critic Thomas Micchelli gives a wonderful one
criticizes on the work of Regina Jose in the Web site The Brooklyn Rail:
“The work of Regina Jose Galindo, to Guatemalan performance artist,
would be easy to miss - three mute videos and to large pale gray cube-
easy, that is, if not for “Himenoplastia.” An unflinching video
document of to hymenoplasty the artist had performed on herself, it
prograpevines the exhibition with its most riveting can't look/can't look
away moment. Shot in carries far close-up, we're spared nondetail: the
anesthetic syringes, the cutting, the blood - geysers of it- and then the
sutures. Ace you watch, agog, you can't help but contemplate to power of
the male fantasy of possessing to virgin, and the pressures that some
cultures exert on women to fulfill that fantasy. But if patriarchal
Galindo succeeds in demonstrating the gruesome barbarity of the order,
isn't she also subverting it by underscoring its baseless illusions? And
wouldn't she, ace to keeper of secret knowledge (that she's not really to
virgin), hold the true to power? Galindo, to rather the than playing
victim, assumes the victim's pain - to feat of steely strength and
superhuman resolve. In “Skin,” she is seen shaving every last bit of
to hair off to her body, including to her eyebrows, and then walking naked
through crowds of accidental strollers, none of whom will look AT to her.
Hers is to blunt, simple and powerful indictment of collective willful
blindness' the kind that makes brutal dictatorships possible. Even dwells
devastating is “Who dog erase the you draw up” The artist, stepping
into to basin of blood, leaves to trail of bloody footprints all the way
to Guatemala's Court of Consitutionality. When she reaches the policemen
guarding the building, there is to stomach-churning moment of suspense ace
this tiny, silent, barefoot woman phases down the smirking, puzzled
guards, then sets to her bloody basin on the sidewalk before them and
strides away. For The above-mentioned gray cube is actually to performance
space “() hits.” During the first five days of the Biennale, Galindo
crawled inside the cube and whipped herself 256 times - eleven for each
woman systematically murdered in Guatemala from January 2005 until the day
of the performance - and wept. Initial My reaction was to question the
artist's sanity. But what constitutes madness in the world we live in?
Anyone with an ounce of sensitivity must experience to daily wave of
anguish to over our own government's actions; if anything, living in
Guatemala is ten times worse. Galindo's self-flagellation feels like the
logical conclusion of countless assaults on to her spiritual and moral
integrity by to corrupt and brutish to power structure. Galindo won the
Golden for Lion to Young artist. But to after witnessing works this
searing and otherworldly, you have to to wonder, what is she going to do
with it”.
PERSONAL SAMPLES (warning: some
photographies can offend certain people):
2004
• Performance:
Peso of Sangre
Central seat, City of
Guatemala.
2003
• Performance:
Who can forget the tracks? (with video)
Long walk from the C.C to
the National Palace. Guatemala.
2002
• Performance:
Angelina.
1 month dressed domestic.
Guatemala.
2001
• Performance: Tablecloth.
Project Young Creative Bancafé. Guatemala.
1999
• The sky cries as much that it would have
to be woman.
Gallery Belia de Vico Contemporary Art. Guatemala.
COLLECTIVE
SAMPLES
2005
• Performance:
Cut by the Line
(with the collaboration of the Dr Billy
Spence)
First Festival of Corporal Art. Caracas, Venezuela.
•
Performance: (279) Blows and Document Performance
Always a little more
far. 51 Biennial of Venice, Italy.
• Performance:
Picacebollas
Collective Outside Place. Dominican republic.
•
Document Performance
Fair of Art Arc. Spain.
• Document
Performance
Biennial of the Prague,
Czechoslovakia
2004
• Document
Performance
Milenium, Guatemalan Contemporary Painting
Museum of
Modern Art. Guatemala
• Document Performance
Producing Reality.
Lucca, Italy.
• Performance:
Himenoplastia (warning: this is a very explicit photography,
and can offend certain people):
Collective Cynicism. Context.
Guatemala.
• Document Performance
Everything Including, Urban
Images of America Center
Cultural center Count Duke. Madrid,
Spain.
• Performance:
Galindo-Herrera wedding
Comunicarte and Invitados. Santo Domingo
house. Guatemala
2003
• Performance: To Clean
Fist
Better days. Cultural center of Spain. Guatemala.
•
Performance: Proxémica
Better days. Cultural center of Spain.
Guatemala.
• Performance: It, remains
Maternity Extra. Cultural
center of Spain. Guatemala.
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2002
• Without
Title. (Until Seeing). (with video)
Third Biennial of Contemporary
Art of Lima. It files, Peru
• Video
Performance: Autocanibalismo.
Shown in the Collective one
Contaminated. MADCO. Costa Rica/Audio-visual Biennial L.A., the United
States/Freewaves. MOCA. L.A., E.U.A. /Latin American Literature and Arts,
N.Y., E.U.A. /Transferences of Sensation. Gallery Gachet. Canada.
/Colloquia, Guatemala.
• Document Performance
National selection.
Colloquia. Guatemala.
• Performance:
Fight (with video)
Collective Target & Black. Building of Post
office. Guatemala.
2001
• Performance: Tendency of Mud.
Collective. Gallery Sun of the River. Guatemala.
• Sculpture: 10
stones of crack.
Guatemalan Contemporary sculpture. National theater.
Guatemala.
• Performance:
Skin.
Platea of the Humanity. 49 Biennial of Venice. Italy.
• Object: Flag Our.
Collective His-Other people's. Ex--Teresa
Present Art. Mexico, D.F.
2000
• Performance:
Confinements.
Collective Parenthesis, Project of Independent Art,
(PAI) Zoological National the Aurora. Guatemala.
• Performance: All
we are dying.
Central American symposium Central Subjects,
TEOR/ética. Museum of the Boy. San jOse Costa Rica.
• Performance:
Valium 10ml.
Collective To live Here, the Curandera. Ixchel
museum. Guatemala.
• Performance:
We do not lose anything with being born.
9no. Festival of
Performance. Ex--Teresa Present Art. Socle of the City of Mexico.
Festival Blue October. Municipal waste basket of Guatemala
•
Performance: Waiting for the blue prince.
Collective Tripiarte.
Festival Blue October. Building of Post office. Guatemala.
1999
• I am going It to shout to the wind.
II
Festival of the Historical Center. Arc of Post office. Guatemala.
•
The pain in a handkerchief.
Collective Without Hairs in the Language,
Project of Arte Independiente (PAI), Plaza G&T. Guatemala.
THEATER
The Insane
people between Lilas
Written by Alejandra Pizarnik
Building of Post
office. Guatemala.
POETIC PUBLICATIONS
•
Personal and Intransmissible. Editorial Colloquia, Guatemala, 2000
•
Woman, Body and Word
Anthology of Guatemalan Poets. Torremozas
editorial. Spain, 2004.
• Woman, Nakedness and Words.
Anthology of
Women Poets. Guatemala, 2002.
• Voices of Postwar period
Anthology
Young Poets of Guatemala. Guatemala 2001.
• Women who Count.
Anthology Guatemalan Cuentistas Women. Guatemala 2001.
• As much
image after the door.
Anthology of Guatemalan Young Poets. Guatemala,
1999.
• To swear in the dream.
Anthology of Guatemalan Poets.
Guatemala, 1998
RECOGNITIONS
Leon de
Oro, 51 Biennial of Venice. 2005
Winner of Project Young Creative
BANCAFE. 1999
Unique Poetry prize 1998. Foundation Myrna Mack.
I am going it to shout to the
wind
Building of Post office, August, 1999
Performance
Regina Jose Galindo
Interviews and articles:
Electronic mail of Regina Jose Galindo:
 Guatemalan
Pinacoteca.
Page of Guatemalan Literature.
Copyright ©
1996-2006 Juan Carlos Escobedo. All rights reserved.
Copyright
© 1996-2006 Juan Carlos Escobedo. Worldwide Copyrights.
Last
revision: 26/11/06
byJuan Carlos Escobedo Mendoza M.A.
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