Naomi Rincón Gallardo is a visual artist. Her work constructs imaginary narratives, often inspired by Mesoamerican myths, stories and accounts of resistance against heteropatriarchal and colonial dispossession. In her stories, ancestral beliefs combine with contemporary aesthetic references, such as DIY and queer aesthetics, creating a universe that is visually saturated and abundant, but also familiar in its almost handcrafted construction. Some of her notorious works include Sangre pesada (2018), Resiliencia Tlacuache (2019). Her exhibitions include the Berlin Biennial (2020) and the Venice Biennial (2022).
Artist and researcher Naomi Rincón Gallardo (1979, North Carolina; lives in Mexico City) moves between performance and video to construct imaginary narratives, often inspired by Mesoamerican myths, stories and accounts of resistance against heteropatriarchal and colonial dispossession. In her stories, ancestral beliefs combine with contemporary aesthetic references, such as DIY and queer aesthetics, creating a universe that is visually saturated and abundant, but also familiar in its almost handcrafted construction. Rincón Gallardo uses strategies from militant feminist theory and radical theatricality, areas where she acts as both an artist and a provocateur, to come up with queer models of interaction and of social encounters. The direct and explicit reference in some works to episodes where indigenous women have struggled for their territory affirm the complexity of a practice that is current and exigent, but also enmeshed with the dense indigenous cosmology of Mesoamerica.
Sangre pesada [Heavy Blood] (2018), for example, was born from an investigation into the mining universe in Zacatecas, in central Mexico, where silver extraction began as early as the 16th Century. In the three-channel video installation, the artist puts local myths and wisdom into conflict with the destructive inheritance of colonial and neocolonial processes of exploitation. Similarly, in works like Resiliencia Tlacuache [Tlacuache Resilience] (2019) she reflects on the expropriation processes taking place in Oaxaca territory. In dealing with contemporary and pressing issues through legends and fables that are often hidden and silenced, and in putting great emphasis on musicality, Rincón Gallardo’s work addresses some of the issues central to the very conception of the 34th Bienal, such as the freedom that can emerge from production that happens in conditions of seclusion and invisibility, and the importance of singing in resisting trauma and threats of all kinds.
