Regina José Galindo / Karina Theurer – Talk
In a conversation with the lawyer Karina Theurer from the human rights organization ECCHR, the artist Regina José Galindo will talk about femicide and patriarchal violence. Femicide has been a criminal offence in Guatemala since 2008 (law against femicide and other forms of violence against women); in Germany, this classification of gender-motivated murders does not yet exist. However, femicide, the murder of women on the basis of their sex, is not a Latin American phenomenon. In Germany femicides are described all too often as “family tragedy”, “jealousy drama” or, if there is a link to migration, as “honour killings”. Theurer and Galindo, together with the curator of the exhibition “This Might Be A Place For Hummingbirds,” Antje Weitzel, will discuss not only the legal and statistical facts, but also the social and structural backgrounds, the patriarchal conditions that make femicide possible.
In the exhibition “This Might Be A Place For Hummingbirds” Regina José Galindo shows the work Presencia (Presence), a performance and photo series. For this work Galindo dresses in the clothes of murdered women. Each outfit is on loan from the families of the victims. The relatives see the work as a manifestation of memories of their loved ones. According to the artist, “Presencia is a performance project drawing from the energy of these women, the silenced. In this way, we want to claim them, talk about them, and honor their lives.” With her work, the artist takes a stand against the high number of femicides in Guatemala, against cultures of misogyny that are found beyond Guatemala, and makes clear the urgency of dealing with violence against women, sexual and patriarchal violence as a global phenomenon.
Karina Theurer joined ECCHR in 2017. ECCHR is an independent, non-profit legal and educational organization dedicated to enforcing civil and human rights worldwide. It has set itself the task of protecting and enforceing the rights guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as other declarations of human rights and national constitutions, through legal means. Theurer also teaches courses on International Public Law, feminist and postcolonial legal critique, Human Rights and Constitutional Law both at the Law Faculty of the Humboldt University and within other university programs.
The event is taking place in the pop-up bar “Las Golondrinas” by artist Maya Saravia.
The exhibition “This Might Be A Place For Hummingbirds,” curated by Çağla Ilk and Antje Weitzel, which is on show 16 November 2019 – 5 February 2020 at Galerie im Körnerpark, Berlin-Neukölln, is supported by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe / Programme Open-Sector Funding, and the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa).
