She walked barefoot, leaving footprints of human blood outside the Constitutional Court. She underwent surgery to reconstruct her hymen and become a virgin again. She had a doctor injected her in the mouth with anesthesia as she attempted to read the testimonies of Indigenous survivors of the Ixil genocide. Guatemalan artist Regina José Galindo attracted international recognition for her performances after winning a Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2005. Today, her work is featured in galleries and catalogues around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.
Ramiro Guevara has written an interview with the Guatemalan artist, Regina José Galindo, for El Faro. This version, in English, is thanks to the translation by Max Granger. It is a fascinating glimpse into the work of the artist whose work is informed by state violence, in whichever form it is manifest.
In the interview, she discusses the social contexts that inform her creative process, and the role of political art in the democratic crisis sweeping Central America.
In October 2000, the body of a woman, naked and in a fetal position, appeared in a clear plastic bag in Guatemala City’s municipal dump, like another piece of trash. The woman was Regina José Galindo, a Guatemalan artist born on August 27, 1974. The scene: part of one of her first performances, No perdemos nada con nacer (We Lose Nothing by Being Born), denouncing the wave of femicides that had been sweeping the country. That year alone, 213 women were violently murdered, according to a report by the Grupo Guatemalteco de Mujeres. Galindo sees her body as a canvas to display and perform her art, and sees art as a means to denounce Guatemala’s violent history — a country that, in her view, “does not live with the truth.”
[…]
My relationship with the Army has to do with how I naturalized things in the past and grew up with them. It doesn’t scare me to see a soldier with an armored vehicle and a Galil rifle. I grew up seeing soldiers with Israeli weapons. After the signing of the peace agreement, those soldiers became privatized police. Figures of perverted power have been a constant presence in our national lives. It’s hard for a Guatemalan to be shocked by simply seeing them in society. When people come to visit, on the other hand, one of the first things they’ll often say to us is how horrible it is to see so many armed men with high-caliber weapons in the city. And the response is always, “Oh, yeah, that’s nothing.” We’ve normalized violence and acts of repressive power in Guatemala.
You can read the full interview, with links and photos, here, Regina José Galindo, Performance Artist: “In Guatemala, we don’t live with the truth”.
Categories: Corruption, Culture, Environment, Femicide, Gender, Genocide, Guatemala, Human Rights, Impunity, Indigenous peoples, Justice, Military, Racism, Rios Montt, Violence
Guatemala Solidarity Network 
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