THE SECOND ROOM
Regina José Galindo’s video, La verdad, certainly provides one of the most intense and dramatic moments of the itinerary. It is a famous work, exhibited in 2013, and it censures the degeneration of power under the Guatemalan President Efrain Rios Montt. The artist is sitting at a school desk, reading declarations by women victims of rape and trickery during the Guatemalan civil war. Her action is interrupted by a dentist who periodically injects an anaesthetic in her mouth, reducing her capacity to formulate the words. Her reading is therefore transformed into a mantra, pronounced with enormous difficulty. In spite of the systematic attempt to censor her voice, represented by the figure of the dentist, the artist continues to speak regardless, though her voice is broken, her lips swollen, and the words come more and more slowly. Thus, the artist’s body become the unit with which to measure the despotic pressure of power. It takes upon itself the atrocities suffered by the collective body.
