33:28 minutes
In 2012, former Guatemalan President José Efran Ros Montt was charged with genocide and crimes against humanity; Regina José Galindo’s video Tierra is a chilling reimagining of the atrocities recounted during his trial. Tierra depicts the artist standing naked in a lush field that a bulldozer has broken up. The video references an incident in which innocent Guatemalans were brutally murdered and buried in a mass grave. The stark contrast between the machine’s force and the artist’s vulnerable body encapsulates Montt’s regime’s injustice. Moreover, the chasm surrounding her serves as a poignant symbol of the despair and alienation that political violence and tyranny frequently cause.
Regina José Galindo is a visual and performance artist. Her work investigates the universal ethical implications of social injustices such as racial, gender, and other abuses in our society’s inequitable institutions of power. In the context of a newly democratized culture, Galindo has developed a socially and politically motivated practice. She strives to acknowledge her country’s thirty-six years of civil war while also looking forward to a more peaceful and productive future. Galindo’s work focuses on historical issues that persist in the “new” Guatemala. Her work is confrontational and often shocking, bringing to light issues that few Guatemalans are willing to confront. Galindo’s unapologetically graphic actions amplify her contentious statements. She hopes to shake her Guatemalan audience out of their trance, breaking the numbness caused by years of violence. Galindo is best known for her performance work addressing the social, political and cultural violence that has affected her native Guatemala. Her work stages her own body, often submitting it to severe acts in order to evince the mass violence, crimes and sacrifice experienced by indigenous Mayan communities and the women among them who suffered the brunt of the conflict during the thirty-six year conflict. Indifference is not an option for Galindo, by appropriating destruction and loss, her work condemns the abuse of women, and propels viewers to response or resistance.
Bowers’ Radical Hospitality (2015) is a sculptural contradiction: its red and blue neon letters proclaim the words of the title, signaling openness and generosity, while the barbed wires that encircle the words give another message entirely...
The small drawings that comprise Study from May Day March, Los Angeles 2010 (Immigration Reform Now) and We Are Immigrants Not Terrorists are based on photographs taken at a political rally in downtown Los Angeles in which thousands of individuals demonstrated for immigrants’ rights...
Tania Libre is a film by Lynn Hershman Leeson centered around renowned artist Tania Bruguera and her experience as a political artist and activist under the repressive government of her native Cuba...
La Sombra (The Shadow) is a video of Regina Jose Galindo performing with a moving Leopard tank...
Bowers’ Radical Hospitality (2015) is a sculptural contradiction: its red and blue neon letters proclaim the words of the title, signaling openness and generosity, while the barbed wires that encircle the words give another message entirely...
The small drawings that comprise Study from May Day March, Los Angeles 2010 (Immigration Reform Now) and We Are Immigrants Not Terrorists are based on photographs taken at a political rally in downtown Los Angeles in which thousands of individuals demonstrated for immigrants’ rights...
Empire’s Borders II – Passage and Empire’s Borders II – Workers are from the three-channel film installation Empire’s Borders II – Western Enterprise, Inc...
JAKE! @ Betty Cuningham Gallery | Painters' Table Skip to main content JAKE! @ Betty Cuningham Gallery https://johnmitchellworld.wordpress.com/2020/02/19/jake/ Jake Berthot, Chapel Trail Near Alter Road, 2000, oil on panel, 26 3/8 x 26 1/8 inches (courtesy of Betty Cuningham Gallery) John Mitchell visits the exhibition JAKE! at Betty Cuningham Gallery, New York, on view through February 23, 2020...
In Tapitapultas (2012), Donna Conlon and Jonathan Harker comment on mass consumerism and pollution by way of a game they invented...
The video Swimming in rivers of Glue is composed of various images of nature, exploring the themes of exploration of space and its colonization...
La Sombra (The Shadow) is a video of Regina Jose Galindo performing with a moving Leopard tank...
Stretching between San Pedro and the beach in Altata, Sinaloa, there is a 40 km road where there are three invisible borders controlled by rivalling armed groups...
The Nightwatch , which is an ironic reference to the celebrated painting by Rembrandt, follows the course of a fox wandering among the celebrated collections of the National Portrait Gallery in London...
In “And so it is” shows the image of a faceless man before a microphone, ready to deliver an important message...