Doris Steinhichler
El transgresor está en Los Pinos, no en la selva [The Transgressor is in Los Pinos not in the Jungle]
July 1994, Polyforum Siqueiros, Distrito Federal

On January 2, 1994, the Mexican government called the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) transgressors of the law in order to criminalize them for the armed uprising that occurred the day before.

In July, as part of Alter-nativo [Alter-native], Multidisciplinary Week of Native Art at the Polyforum Siqueiros, Doris Steinbichler, an artist of Austrian origins who has been living in Mexico since 1990, called for a collective performance: El transgresor está en Los Pinos, no en la selva, named after a slogan taken from one of the marches organized during the clashes and negotiations between the EZLN and the government.

The performance was a parody of a fashion catwalk with music, an eccentric designer—the artist—and two commentators. Simultaneously, a group of models paraded with different pieces that reproduced the aforementioned slogan. They gesticulated and danced with costumes that referred to different social activities, such as sunbathing, playing soccer, or going out dancing, and different roles like “Miss Chiapas.” In turn, a “Zapatista” collective circulated before the public while the presenters spoke about the improvement of their look. The performance came to an end when the participants become integrated into the same symphony and dance, and when a man with a balaclava grabbed Doris in the last moments of the performance and extracted her out of the tumult.

In posing the question “who are the true transgressors,” the title opened up a public discussion pointing to the government, shedding light on its manipulations and deceptions that start out as simple discursive acts, but which conclude with extermination.

Andrea Fereyra
Chuchita visita Tuxtla, July 2ooo
Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas 

Chuchita ^[7] appeared in Pelea en diez regalos ^[8],  with Andrea playing the part of a boxer and the artist Eduardo Abaroa that of a referee organized ten rounds in which a boxer tries to read and hold a microphone, hindered by a mouthguard and gloves. Her inability to explain herself forces her to leave the ring to present elements associated with female characters in literature, written or created by men. In her attempt to establish a correlation, she returns to the ring. Unable to speak, Abaroa translates her words. The domination of the masculine voice over the feminine word prevails turning this action into an irony.

After this first appearance, the artist was invited ^[9] to give a workshop in Tuxtla. For this performance, the boxer gets a head start and, dressed in her suit, initiates the action from the moment she boards the plane. The premise was that the acclaimed athlete, one of Mexico’s most famous welterweight wrestlers, was visiting her fans (the workshop’s participants) in the city.

Outside of the ring, Chuchita led a touristic visit. The degree of proximity with her followers provided a glimpse of a woman with a lot of discipline, interested in promoting sports, with stress problems, a smoker, and an alcoholic. The visit was photographed by two workshop assistants, who wrote down their personal impressions of Chuchita, which Andrea built from a study both of the role of the boxer in the social environment, and from touristic photography. This action in Tuxtla was for Ferreyra another evident gap between documentation and action, for the written and visual records with fictional tints brought her closer to documentary narratives that are not necessarily true but plausible.

On Friday, October 13, Chuchita jumped into the ocean in Puerto Rico. The knock-out left the red umbrella and boxer clothes floating. This fight with no rival symbolized the disappearance of her alter ego.

Katrina Bello
Los usos de los de los desusos. Póngase buzo [The Uses of Disuses. Póngase Buzo], 1997
Headquarters of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), Distrito Federal

For the elections of 1997, in which the contend was for the Headquarters of Government of the then Distrito Federal and the delegations to the Legislative Assembly, each party made its campaign. Banners and posters were made out of plastic prevailed, which was significant for Katnira Bello, Edith Reyes, Elena Grada, and David C. Agundis because of the excess of propaganda: the plastic, which has short lived use, but which has a lifespan longer than those of the voters, disappeared from the passers-by’s attention in the blink of an eye.

During the month of June, Katnira and her peers dedicated themselves to collecting and cleaning the plastic materials in order to make a series of new elements. At that same time, Mexico was dealing with the aftermath of a hurricane season that had left a large number of affected people who were not receiving government attention. Why spend state money on “junk” propaganda instead of helping those who suffered the disaster? And so, outside of the current INE, the artists led a protest that involved presenting to pedestrians other possible uses for plastic in an installation—cars, a clothesline with clothes, raincoats, banners, chairs, tables, school furniture, books, and even fake food—which showed ways to help the hurricane victims who remained living outdoors.

Los usos de los desusos. Póngase buzo was an action in public space in relation to a social and symbolic space, which went past the individual body and into the social one for the construction of public opinion, about ecology and the inequalities imposed by the government.