Regina José Galindo

Regina José Galindo’s retrospective at PAC is entitled “Estoy Viva” (I am Alive). The phrase is also the title of the work, also 2014, that visitors first encounter, appearing in large iron letters on the wall—an assertive welcome. “I am alive” were words spoken by one of the indigenous Mayan women who suffered violence under the military dictatorship in Guatemala who now bore witness, their only option after emerging from the experience with nothing but their lives. The artist reads from various personal accounts of the violence in the video La Verdad (The Truth), 2013, while a dentist numbs her mouth. Through lucid and concentrated actions, Galindo penetrates and transmits the essence of a voiceless body faced with brutality and coercion, inscribing this condition within herself and exposing her fragility. All forty-eight works in the exhibition demonstrate this, including performances documented by videos and photographs—one conceived specifically for PAC, Exhalación (estoy viva) (Exhalation [I am alive]), 2014—but also drawings and sculptures. They are divided into sections entitled Politica (Politics), Donna (Woman), Organico (Organic), Violenza (Violence), and Morte (Death).

El cielo llora tanto que debería ser mujer (The sky weeps so much it must be a woman), 1999, was one the first actions staged by the artist for the exhibition, in which she immersed herself in a tub of water, holding her breath until her lungs were ready to burst. Exhalación (estoy viva) is the most recent work—performed by Galindo at the opening of the show. The artist, having taken a sedative, remained stretched out in an empty room, naked, pacified as if drained of all life. Entering one at a time, people were encouraged to witness the vapor from her breath by holding a little mirror close to her nose. The artist, however, somehow held on to consciousness despite being drugged, until doctors on standby came in to readminister the anesthesia. Eventually, she regained her senses after a long wait. Her fortuitous resistance to the sedative revealed the effort and difficulty entailed in putting the body to the test, an act that, all too human, transcends the artifice of staging. In the end, art and existence merged, as Galindo’s body itself shouted “I am alive.”

Translated from Italian by Marguerite Shore.