Photo: Ameno Córdova, courtesy of the artist
Guatemalan artist Regina José Galindo’s work is centred on the immutable presence of the body before the adversities it must face. Marked by the civil war that tore her country apart between 1960 and 1996, Galindo’s work decries violence, particularly violence against women, and sheds light on the suffering that issues from it. Over 200,000 people were assassinated, tens of thousands disappeared, and over a million were displaced during the thirty-six-year armed conflict. As if to make up for the countless erased or missing bodies, the body — often the artist’s own — becomes a commemorative monument to the lost, an instrument of visibility that enables us to interrogate the injustice and to beget a visceral empathy.
