‘I am a woman who flies’ María Teresa Hincapié in the MACBA Collection
The sacralisation of the everyday is the unifying thread running through the works of María Teresa Hincapié. A pioneer of performance in the geographic context of her native Colombia, Hincapié regards common objects, no matter how minor, as closely linked to art in a meaningful and mystical sense. One of her most charismatic actions, dating from 1989, was the eight working hours she spent in a commercial venue, currently the Lerner bookshop, in the centre of Bogotá. In the shop window, or ‘vitrine’, Hincapié spent an entire working day cleaning the space, combing her hair, putting making-up on, while also incorporating the glass window as a highly communicative support, on which she drew, blew kisses and composed a text about women. In the manner of a poetic manifesto, she wrote beautiful and powerful statements, such as ‘Soy una mujer que vuela’ (‘I am a woman who flies’), which she then meticulously erased. The aim of the artist was to remind us that everything personal is also by definition political.
