Siqueiros Public Art Hall Hosts “Profile of Peruvian Women (1980-1981)”

The profile of female reproductive organs, an unpublished sculpture of an unfeasible project in the middle of a hall crowed by diagrams;that’s the poster of Teresa Burga’sPerfil de la mujer peruana (1980-1981), at Siqueiros Public Art Hall, opened in Thursday.

The artist’s display, one the transcendental female figures in terms of the historic construction of this continent and representative of the visual arts renovation in Peru throughout the 1960sand 70s, was opened along with the work carried by Mexican Fritzia Irizar, who intervened the façade of the building located in Polanco, the 29^th on Tres Picos street.

The work of these two artists, who come from different countries and generations, spearheads the art hall’s program to recover Latin American historic figures as benchmarks of contemporary art, director Taiyana Pimentel said.

The 40^thanniversary of David Alfaro Siqueiros’ passing represents the first line ofthe work to be carried out by the institution this year, she explained. The second step includes an invitation to three Latin American female figures from the 1970s, who established guidelines of the discourse when it came to positioning women within the artistic production of a mainly-male continent, in terms of visual languages and critic readings.

Created between 1980 and 1981, Profile of Peruvian Women project was developed by Teresa Burga with the collaboration of psychologist Marie-France Cathelat, in a sociologic context. A survey, later turned into diagrams, draw the woman of that time and put on the table matters that weren’t openly debated.

The result was exhibited in Medellin, Colombia, and Lima, Peru. After decades in the archive, the project was recovered and it will be showcased in Mexico through April 20.

According to the curator, it was very important for Siqueiros Hall to recover this kind of incursion from art, within the sociology and this feminist discourse, in an effort to assess our current situation with the same questions from 1979.

The show was opened on January 16 and can be visited through April 20, 2014.