TE BUSCO EN OTRO NOMBRE [I’M SEARCHING FOR YOU IN ANOTHER NAME]
Portrait of María Us. Photograph by Gregorio Díaz. Courtesy of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (MAMBO).
María Us is a Guatemalan activist who was a guerilla member during Guatemala’s armed internal conflict between 1960 and 1996.
As the outcome of the partnership between her and the artist Ana Gallardo, we are presenting a play in the form of a biographical act which tells the story of a forest that is both the memory of land struggles and the community’s means of sustenance, in an attempt to disinhibit and publicise the resistance of several generations of female bodies violated by their family members and fellow political activists, too.
MARÍA US
I am a woman with K'iche' roots. I speak my native language. Ever since I remember, I’ve worked the land a lot. I went to primary school in my community. What I remember from primary school: most of the teachers were Latino and they would hit and punish us over anything. And they forced us to study or speak Spanish. I liked to play and run, and I imagined that when I was a bit older, I would go far from my family to study and teach the children of my village. Everything changed when the government of Guatemala began to damage and murder. That was my dream no more. I think that schools should not be enclosed; children should not be inside four walls; they should study in a place where they coexist with nature. Someday I’ll teach children.
This exhibition is based on accumulated malaises and ghosts that have haunted Ana Gallardo since well before she became the artist that she is. However, more than a narrative of overcoming or the culmination of a formal and existential process, the artworks that make up this journey spanning several decades of production brim with passion and non-conformism.