Poetry Reading – Rosa Chaves (Kíche-kaqchikel Maya) and Regina Jose Galindo

ROSA CHAVEZ is a Kaqchikel-K’iche’ Maya poet and artist who has published several collections of poetry, including Casa solitaria (2005), Ab’aj/Piedra (2007), and Quitapenas (2011). She participates in the poetry workshop in the Cultural metropolitan Center organizad by the literary collective, Folio 114. Her poetry has also been translated to English, and has been published in seminal anthologies such as Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas (2011) edited by Allison Hedge Coke. Chavez is one of the most important and influential Indigenous poets in Latin America. She is one of the founding members of the literary collectives Caja Lúdica, and Cuenta cuentos , and participates in the theater workshop of the Rayuela (independent theater) group. In 2010, she was named Guatemala’s artist of the year in the popular newspaper, Siglo XXI.

REGINA JOSÉ GALINDO is a performance artist and writer whose work addresses the atrocities committed by Guatemalan dictatorships, social injustice, and discrimination on the basis of race and gender. Galindo isolates and embodies the vast suffering in Latin America by inflicting direct physical violence on her own body in highly symbolic gestures of resistance. She has exhibited and performed at numerous locations including: Exit Art (New York); Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem (The Netherlands); El Museo del Barrio (New York); MoMA PS1 (New York); and the 51st Venice Biennial, for which she was awarded the Golden Lion, the only Central American artist who has ever received the award. Galindo is considered to be one of the most subversive voices in contemporary art and poetry today.