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Regina José Galindo
Text by Rosina Cazali, Fernando Castro Flórez, Eugenio Viola, Clare Carolin.
Since 1999, the Guatemalan performance artist Regina José Galindo (born 1974) has drawn attention to her native country's oppression of women and the poor by activating her body as a site for collective inscription. Several of her performances are extreme exercises in the deprivation of dignity: she has been publicly stunned with an electroshock gun and “cleansed” with a power hose; she once commissioned a plastic surgeon to locate the imperfections on her naked body in public with a marker. In Guatemala, these actions are not so easily assigned to the symbolic realm: in a 2005 interview Galindo said, “As Guatemalans, we know how to decipher any image of pain, because we have seen it all up close.” This volume surveys all of Regina José Galindo's works in performance and video from 2006 to 2010.
"Submerged in a bathtub full of water, I hold my breath until I can't stand it any long. I raise my head and gasp for breath, then I go back down, over and over again."
Featured image is reproduced from Regina José Galindo.
"Galindo is one of the most solid, consistent, and convincing artists in the region and, right from the outset, her work has been not just daring, but also cohesive and characterized by great depth. It belongs to a Central American context, and yet it manages to transcend the Guatemalan situation. It is a highly robust work and it always comes from reference to the lower levels of society, and to women in particular. In actual fact it deals with all those 'others' who have been subjected to violence. Her performances are directly linked to the brutality of the patriarchal society she lives in, and it puts the resistance of the public to the test. Galindo takes the place of the victims, inflicting upon her petite body the same violence that she denounces."
Virginia Pérez-Ratton, excerpted from The Atrocious Incarnations of Regina José Galindo in Regina José Galindo.
FORMAT: Pbk, 6.5 x 9.5 in. / 400 pgs / 200 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $45.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $55 ISBN: 9788836619924 PUBLISHER: Silvana Editoriale AVAILABLE: 10/31/2011 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of print AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA LA ASIA AU/NZ AFR ME
Published by Silvana Editoriale. Text by Rosina Cazali, Fernando Castro Flórez, Eugenio Viola, Clare Carolin.
Since 1999, the Guatemalan performance artist Regina José Galindo (born 1974) has drawn attention to her native country's oppression of women and the poor by activating her body as a site for collective inscription. Several of her performances are extreme exercises in the deprivation of dignity: she has been publicly stunned with an electroshock gun and “cleansed” with a power hose; she once commissioned a plastic surgeon to locate the imperfections on her naked body in public with a marker. In Guatemala, these actions are not so easily assigned to the symbolic realm: in a 2005 interview Galindo said, “As Guatemalans, we know how to decipher any image of pain, because we have seen it all up close.” This volume surveys all of Regina José Galindo's works in performance and video from 2006 to 2010.
