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  • Regina Jose Galindo: The Body of Others

Carolin, Clare and Galindo, Regina Jose, 2009, Show, Exhibition or Event, Regina Jose Galindo: The Body of Others

Abstract or Description:

Regina Jose Galindo: The Body of Others was the first major UK presentation of the work of Guatemalan artist, Regina José Galindo, and the first monographic survey of her work. The exhibition surveyed Galindo's prolific output from the past decade and included newly commissioned performance, sculpture and photography. It was positively received by press and public and selected by The Guardian as one of the top shows to view http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/mar/06/exhibitionist-art-show.

Galindo’s films, performances and poetry are responses to her native Latin America. Using her body to express visual metaphors for the Guatemalan condition, Galindo’s work signals wider imbalances of power: be it the carnage of Guatemala's recent civil war, endemic sexism and violence against women, or Central America’s relationship with the United States.

The curatorial challenges of presenting a performance-based practice whose subject mater was remote to the experience of its audiences was the subject of Carolin's paper 'Regina Jose Galindo: Curating Performance/Translating Poetry' presented at the conference The Task of the Curator: Translation, Innovation and Intervention in Exhibitionary Practice at the University of California at Santa Cruz in May 2010 and subsequently published in the journal Viz-InterArts in November 2011.

Carolin also published a 6,000 word essay in the peer reviewed journal Third Text (March, 2011) which drew on conversations with the artists which took place during the preparation of the exhibition. Here Carolin traced how the internet and related digital technologies that have been key to the production and dissemination of Galindo’s work have affected its critical reception. In parallel configuring the symbolic ‘de’ and ‘re’ materialization of the human body in Galindo’s practice over the past decade through the thinking of the Argentinean Oscar Masotta, with specific reference to his text (from a lecture of 1968) Despues del Pop Nosotros Desmaterializamos/After Pop we Dematerialize. While Masotta uses the term in connection with Argentinean ‘media art’ (artists’ actions and performances realised specifically for the mess media) Carolin outlined a reverse process by which Galindo develops a radical, performance-based practice characterized by the graphic representation (and sometimes literal enactment) of violence read by the mass media as ‘sensationalist’ and by art critics and curators as ‘political’ or ‘activist’, rapidly achieves international success and then effectively ‘dematerializes’ as a live artist, rematerializing the art object in imitation of the human form, as commodity.

Events:
Title
Location
Dates
Type
Regina Jose Galindo: The Body of Others
Modern Art Oxford, UK
31 Jan - 29 Mar 2009
One person show
Subjects: Creative Arts and Design > W100 Fine Art > W130 Sculpture
Creative Arts and Design > W400 Drama > W410 Acting
Creative Arts and Design > W600 Cinematics and Photography
Creative Arts and Design > W600 Cinematics and Photography > W690 Cinematics and Photography not elsewhere classified
Creative Arts and Design > W800 Imaginative Writing > W820 Poetry Writing
School or Centre: School of Arts & Humanities
Date Deposited: 16 Nov 2011 19:21
Last Modified: 17 Nov 2020 23:18
URI: https://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/id/eprint/718
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