In Tierra, Guatemalan artist and poet Regina José Galindo’s stands naked in a field, while over a half hour a large earthmoving excavator razes the land around her. There is a stark visual contrast between the machine’s huge, armoured bulk, and the artist’s stark, vulnerable body. Eventually, Galindo is left on an island of grass surrounded by a large trench.

She describes how, in Tierra, ‘around me there is nothing but chaos and theft but I remain on my feet, ready to fight, ready to defend the land that roots me’. At the time of Galindo’s performance, the former president of Guatemala, General Efrain Rios Montt, was standing trial for crimes against humanity that included genocidal sexual violence against Maya Ixil people. Critic Michelle Santiago Cortés’ writes that Tierra ‘asks us to consider how our bodies are marked by gender, race, and class; and how, in our own lives, we play the role of the excavator or the person behind the camera, or we stand in the artist’s own two feet… Body and land are what situate us, Galindo reminds us. Without them, we are nobody and nowhere.’

Duration: 33 minutes 30 seconds

Opening times:
Mon-Sun 12-6pm