An orgasm, like the land, belongs to those who work it Mireia Sallarès, women and the spaces of resistance

Mireia Sallarès travelled around Mexico for four years with a camera and a sign saying Las muertes chiquitas (Small Deaths). Over thirty women, of different ages, social class, professions and religions talked openly in front of the camera about their experience of orgasm. The result was an almost five-hour-long documentary denouncing how something as intimate and private as sexual pleasure can be turned into a high-precision political weapon. When talking about pleasure, the interviewed women relived their experiences of pain, violence, abuses of power, death, struggle and commitment. An orgasm, like the land, belongs to those who work it is heard like a mantra throughout the interviews. During the presentation of the documentary at the CCCB in 2020, Sallarès asserted: ‘In that dialogue, I was interested in the women’s capacity for self-awareness, their capacity to narrate themselves. I believe that faced with something that regulates and controls our pleasure, our life, our death, self-narration can act as a space of resistance.’