Apparition (2020)

Synopsis

The spectral takes embodied form in Regina José Galindo’s ongoing performance series Aparición, which stages veiled figures in public spaces as transient monuments to victims of femicide. Cloaked in weighted fabric, the figures operate within what Deleuze might call a folded temporality, collapsing past and present into a shared plane of urgency, interrogating the structures of monumentality and remembrance. In her essay A Threatening Presence, writer Georgia Phillips-Amos argues “rather than commemorate or memorialize lives past, Galindo’s Aparición follows Judith Butler’s definition of spectre as ‘foreclosed and yet surviving’. Their time is ours, and vice-versa”. Galindo’s work thus establishes a presence in place. Returning again to Barnett, “Yet within the hollow of the fold, and despite its closure, a leap may still be possible: not a leap elsewhere…but rather leaping in place…and thus distorting or displacing the ground (the foundation, or its unfounding)”.