September 29, 2022–January 21, 2023
17 West 17th Street
10011 New York NY
The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation is pleased to present El Corazón Aúlla (Heart Howls): Latin American Feminist Performance in Revolt at The 8th Floor, opening on September 29, 2022 and on view until January 21, 2023. Curated by Alexis Heller and Tatiana Muñoz-Brenes, the exhibition includes work from Nayla Altamirano, Denise E. Reyes Amaya, Elina Chauvet, Cristina Flores, Regina José Galindo, Fernanda Laguna and Cecilia Palmeiro, Flavia Marcus Bien, Luiza Prado de O. Martins, Rossella Matamoros-Jiménez, Bárbara Milano, Wynnie Mynerva, Jazmín Ra, and Berna Reale.
The exhibition examines gender-based violence in Latin America through the eyes of artists and activists who bear its daily burden. Working from Peru, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador, Chile, Brazil, and Argentina, the female and nonbinary artists included in El Corazón Aúlla harness their practices for protest and rebellion. Performance is a particularly powerful tool for confronting brutal absence and loss. Through performance, they evoke the rage, fear, ritualized mourning, and feminist community care that inhabits their fight for survival.
As Heller and Muñoz-Brenes write: “These performances, their aesthetic decisions, and their particular social contexts answer questions that other artistic media cannot answer, or that could not establish an alliance with the viewer in the search for social justice.” They continue, “Gender violence, reaching its highest peaks in feminicide and state violence, is a topic that should be howled when shouting is not enough.”
The opening weekend at The 8th Floor will feature a reception on Thursday, September 29, 6–8pm (RSVP) followed by a performance and talk by Flavia Marcus Bien on Saturday, October 1, 2:30–6pm (RSVP). All of our events are free and open to the public, with further programming to be announced soon.
This exhibition is the result of the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation’s first-ever annual open call. Heller and Muñoz-Brenes were selected from a pool of applications by the Foundation’s curatorial team. Please find a full press release in English and Spanish here.