Regina José GALINDO

Regina José GALINDO was born in 1974 in Guatemala City. Her artistic work began in the realm of poetry and drawing. Since 1999, the year in which she did the performance entitled Le voy a gritar al viento, her artistic progression has been stunning. In 2003, with ¿Quién puede borrar las huellas?, her undertaking to walk all the way to the Parliament of Guatemala, leaving in her trail along the way traces of blood in memory of the victims of the armed conflict and in opposition to Efrain Rios Montt, former army officer, coup leader, accused of genocide, who was bidding for President, brought worldwide recognition for her work, which has only further grown since then. Her performances make use of the artist’s body, understood as significant raw material and seat of conflict, where the violence, injustice, discrimination and abuse of power meted out to the weakest, most oppressed, most marginalised sectors of society in the contemporary world, are re-presented and denounced, couched in a vein of poetics informed by a universalist outlook.
“I don’t believe in moral discourses; nor do I believe that art can save the world. But I do believe in the possibility of the image’s capacity to jolt people out of silence. My works are small pillars of resistance, in which an individual body is a metaphor of a social body in constant confrontation with itself.”
She has participated in the 49th, 51st, 53rd and 54th editions of the Venice Biennial; the XI Bienal Internacional de Cuenca; the 29th Biennial of Graphic Arts of Ljubljana; Sharjah Biennial; Bienal de Pontevedra 2010; 17th Biennial of Sydney; II Biennial of Moscow; I Triennial of Auckland; Venice-Istanbul; I Bienal de Arte y Arquitectura de Islas Canarias; IV Bienal de Valencia; III Bienal de Albania; II Biennial of Prague and III Bienal de Lima.
Galindo won the Leon de Oro for best young artist at the 51st edition of the Venice Biennial, in 2005, for her video Himenoplastia. In 2007, the first prize at the V edition of Inquieta Imagen, MADCO, Costa Rica. In 2010 the first prize of the Junnio platform of contemporary art, Guatemala. In 2011, she received the "Gran Premio" of the 29 Biennial of Graphic Arts of Ljubljana. In that same year, Netherlands gave her the Prince Claus Award for her capacity to turn personal indignation and her sense of justice into powerful public events that call for a response that could put a halt to ignorance and self-satisfaction and bring us closer to the experience of others. She has been artist in residence and received academic subsidies to go to places such as Treberice Castle (Czech Republic); Le Plateau (Paris); ArtPace (USA) and CIFO (USA).
Galindo is also a poet. In 1996, the Fundación Coloquia published her book Personal e Intransmisible, in Guatemala. In 1998, she was awarded the Premio Unico de Poesía by the Fundación Mirna Mack. Her texts have been included in several anthologies and published in many reviews.
Her work is also part of many collections, among them: Centre Pompidou (Paris); Princeton University; Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo MEIAC (Badajoz); Fondazione Teseco (Pisa, Italy); Fondazione Galleria Civica (Trento, Italy); Hungarian Motion Picture Public Foundation; MMKA (Budapest, Hungary); Art Foundation Mallorca; Castello di Rivoli (Turin, Italy); Fundación Daros (Zurich, Switzerland); Blanton Museum (Texas, USA); Miami Art Museum; UBS Art Collection; Fundación de Arte Cisneros Fontanal (Miami, USA) and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Costa Rica (MADCO).
Regina José Galindo lives and works in Guatemala City (Guatemala).