June 26–November 27, 2022
GRITO, a mid-career survey of more than 40 pieces by Guatemalan artist Regina José Galindo, has just opened at La Nueva Fábrica, and it was organized by Maya Juracán. The exhibition, which features works dating from 1997 to the present, is Galindo’s first institutional survey in the Americas and celebrates his almost 20-year artistic career.
One of the most well-known artists of her generation, Regina José Galindo works in a variety of media to confront structural inequalities and human rights concerns from a critical perspective that, while deeply based in Guatemala’s silent history, speaks to the urgent global issues of our day. Her work makes use of the body, both the individual and the collective, as a tool to expose, depict, and overthrow several interconnected oppressions.
GRITO illuminates the significance of Galindo’s practice at a time when the Guatemalan State continues to aggressively prioritize the elitist accumulation of wealth over human rights and threatens already vulnerable populations with laws that criminalize sexual education, gender diversity, and women’s agency over their own bodies. GRITO is organized around three thematic constellations: resilience, historical memory, and resistance.
The Hogar Seguro Virgen de la Asunción, a state-run orphanage where 56 girls were purposefully kept locked in a room while it caught fire in 2017, and in which 41 of them died, is one of the exhibition’s key pieces. Its sound installation, Las escucharon gritar y no abrieron la puerta (They heard them scream and did not open the door) (2017), features 41 women screaming for nine minutes. In the collaborative performance Ros de Gente (Rivers of people) (2021–2022), citizens of Guatemalan villages threatened by the State for protecting their rivers marched under a vivid aquamarine fabric, creating a current of resistance.The replica of No Violarás (Thou shalt not rape), a large-scale textual installation that displays the proscription against rape as a billboard on a heavily traveled highway to Antigua, Guatemala, complements the piece at La Nueva Fábrica.
The first monographic publication on Galindo’s work to be created in Latin America will be released in conjunction with the show. Essays from worldwide authors like Judith Butler, Arnoldo Gálvez Suárez, and Yasmn Martn Vodopivec will be included in the catalogue.
A comprehensive selection of free public activities will be offered throughout the run of the exhibition to complement the project. We invite you to visit our website for further details.
La Nueva Fábrica is a contemporary art space in Antigua, Guatemala that promotes creative experimentation through exhibitions, public programs, residencies, and multidisciplinary workshops. Founded in 1998, the organization also holds a permanent collection of historic photography and the artworks of its founder, the late Guatemalan artist Lissie Habie. Recent exhibition projects include Pajch’un Q’iin, Xamalil K’in Kirooneem Solooneem (2022), a solo exhibition by Antonio Pichillá Quiacaín in which the Tz’utujil artist presents elements from the Mayan worldview through a socio-political lens and problematizes European notions of formalism; REPÚBLICA (2021), a collective survey reflecting on 200 years of Guatemalan Statehood; the 22nd Bienal de Arte Paiz (2021), one of Latin America’s longest-standing biennials.
La Nueva Fábrica
Callejon Contreras, Santa Ana
– La Antigua
Guatemala
T +502 7882 4612
[email protected]
lanuevafabrica.org
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