Standard, 1976/2020

Standard is an action Miralles mounted at Galeria G in October 1976. In it, the artist sat in a wheelchair to which she was tied by her hands and feet, her mouth gagged with a mantilla. In front of her, images were projected showing everything that socially shaped women in accordance with gender norms: first communion, wedding, motherhood and building a family, and home life, as well as an ideal of beauty, being an object of desire. At the same time, a television and a radio broadcast the programmes of the time, structured as a vehicle for perpetuating the stereotypes surrounding women, the construction of subjectivity and social codes. Standard condemns religion, education and social values as tools that codify and objectify women through behaviours, attitudes, ideologies and beliefs instilled from birth. There is a translation of the subjectivity constructed in the course of the images. The pressure to which she is subjected by an exoskeleton, the appendage that immobilises her, is not just the wheelchair. Every image tramples on her subjectivity and is imprinted on her biopolitical construct.