"Regina Jose Galindo"
2009-10-02 until 2009-12-19
Exit Art Gallery
New York, NY, USA United States of America

Regina Jose Galindo - the second exhibition in Exit Art's SOLO series and the first in the Performance in Crisis program - is a ten-year survey of performance and installation work by the Guatemalan artist Regina Jose Galindo. The highlight of this important retrospective is the New York premiere of a new work, Cloth, to be performed only once: on the opening night of this exhibition. Cloth is part of a performance trilogy titled Crisis, for which Regina Jose Galindo will enact a series of transactions that reference and critique our current moment of economic instability.

For this performance, the artist will sell each article of clothing she will be wearing for $5 a piece to any audience member willing to pay and remove it from her body. The other performances in the series, Hair and Blood, were performed at the Karlin Studios in Prague, Czech Republic i n Summer 2009.

For the past decade, Galindo‚s work has addressed social and political relations in the Americas. She draws attention to these issues by inflicting or mimicking direct, physical violence on her body ˆ as in Himenoplastia (Hymenoplasty) or Perra, during which the artist carved the Spanish word for Œbitch‚ into her leg ˆ placing herself and the viewer into difficult psychological situations ˆ as in El Dolor en un Panuelo (The Pain in a Handkerchief), during which newspaper articles about victimized women were projected on her naked body ˆ and by performing acts sympathetic to the plight of Guatemalans and to women.

Recalling the political and poetic gestures of Ana Mendieta, the endurance feats of Tehching Hsieh, and the extreme actions of Chris Burden, Regina José Galindo creates powerful visual metaphors by establishing her body as a site of conflict. Indeed her compelling ˆ and sometimes disturbing ˆ body of work shows Galindo chained, trapped, drowned, brutalized, and anguished. Her body becomes a specimen, a potent representation of brutality and agitation.

Regina José Galindo received the Golden Lion award for Best Young Artist at the 2005 Venice Biennale for her work titled Himenoplastia (Hymenoplasty). Other solo exhibitions include those at prometeogallery by Ida Pisani, Milan, Italy; Galerie du Jour Agnes B., Paris, France; Artpace, San Antonio, Texas; Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem, Arnhem, The Netherlands; and Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, UK. She has been included in more than 85 group exhibitions on five continents. As a poet, she has published in several international anthologies. This is her first solo exhibition in New York.

Regina José Galindo curated by Jeanette Ingberman and Papo Colo.

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for the State of New York

Other Important Exhibitions in New York