What would happen if contemporary works of art had the real, immediate effect of changing the most despicable human attitudes? This is what Regina José Galindo’s wants to achieve when she performs: to make her artistic action a driving force to change societies. Anyone reading these lines whose attitude is still somewhere between cynicism and indifference will find in this book reasons for renewed hope that art can be an educational platform. If Galindo knows how to understand, process and open both herself and her audience to empathy, why could that power not be transferable to every person who watches her work? Latin American women artists have had the courage to denounce events that are taking us backwards as a society in terms of consciousness and responsibility. Using the universal, powerful medium of the camera lens, in this volume we analyse the way art empowers people, and the challenges we must overcome to become the empathic, global species we are supposed to be. In achieving this, performance will be a creative weapon. |