ADN Galeria presents the project XX by Regina José Galindo (in collaboration with Prometeogallery di Ida Pisani).

Regina José Galindo began her performing activity in mid-90’s willing to criticize contemporary society's cynicism and hypocrisy. Her work is mostly about Guatemala's political repression, gender-based violence and mistreatment or the officially sanctioned torture. Her first noticeable performace was ¿Quién puede borrar las huellas? (“Who could delete the traces?”), during which the artist walked from the Constituitional Court to the Guatemala National Palace of Culture, leaving a trail of human-blood footprints, in memory of the armed conflict of Guatemala, and in rejection of the candidacy for the presidency of Efraín Ríos Montt: former military man who led coups of State and was found guilty of acts of genocide. The artist uses her body to emphasize the role of the weak, becoming herself the victim of degradation, torture and violence. Choosing borderline situations in between life and death, generated by injustice and injuries (both physical and moral), Galindo puts fear and its consequences under scrutiny having as result a dramatic, radical and profoundly uncomfortable work.

The core of the project XX is the idea and the perception of death in human existence and philosophy. Everyone is afraid of death and even more of the idea of dying completely alone, without anyone weeping for us. In countries where the extreme violence is part of everyday life, death is perceived in a different way. Everyday in Guatemala two to four corpses are buried as XX, unknown. The act of setting gravestones was made aiming to give a place to these human beings in their death. 52 gravestones were placed in the cemetery of La Verbena in Guatemala, partially modifying the space. Under each gravestone there is a body that once was alive. No one knows his name or his face, but nobody could deny his existence. The earth won’t swallow his rests. Somebody was, somebody existed.

Regina José Galindo lives and works in Guatemala, where she was born in 1974. In 2005 she received the Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale, in the category of “artist under 30”, for the video Himenoplastia, showing the surgical reconstruction of her hymen, condemning thus the condition of those countries where virginty is a fundamental requirement for getting married. The artist has worked in numerous museums and international foundations worldwide.