Vitrina, by María Teresa Hincapié Screening of the work on the facade

The video Vitrina, 1989, by María Teresa Hincapié will be projected on the outer facade of the Meier.

As part of the Latin American Popular Theatre Meeting in Bogotá in 1989, María Teresa Hincapié occupied the storefront window of the Librería Lerner bookshop, on the busy Avenida Jiménez. Dressed in blue overalls, she played the role of someone who does household chores. For eight hours straight on three days, she painted a portrait of what it meant to be a woman in the late twentieth century, performing tasks such as sweeping, cleaning, doing her hair and putting on make-up before the astonished eyes of passers-by.

As she walked about inside the space, she used the glass window as a screen on which she wrote phrases in red lipstick –some of them prompted spontaneously by the relationship she struck up with spectators− that she would then wipe off using soap, or cover the window with sheets of newspaper, in which she would make holes through her eyes and mouth peeked out.

The public on the other side of the glass was able to read the questions the artist raised concerning the world of theatre arts, such as: ‘Do you think this is theatre?’, or statements like: ‘I am a woman who flies’ and: ‘I am a blue woman’. The audience also watched her perform actions such as drawing female silhouettes –including a self-portrait– that indicated her intention to create a new female subject by questioning the conventional view and pointing out its contradictions, engaging in tasks considered trivial, menial and limited, almost rituals in modern life. In some way, her physical image as a woman instead became an artistic image that spoke of a new foundational myth and went beyond the categories of gender.