Cantando Bajito: Chorus - at the Ford Foundation Gallery, NYC - 8 October – 7 December 2024

Exhibiting Artists:

Hoda Afshar

Archivo de la Memoria Trans Argentina (Trans Memory Archive Argentina)

Archivo Memoria Trans México/Hospital de ropa (Trans Memory Archive Mexico/Clothing Hospital)

Chloë Bass

Tania Candiani

Fatma Charfi

Lizania Cruz

Cyberfeminism Index

FAQ?

Cecilia Granara

Los Angeles Contemporary Archive

Mai Ling

Textiles Semillas (Textiles as Seeds)

Curated by Roxana Fabius, Beya Othmani, Mindy Seu, and Susana Vargas Cervantes

Translated into English as “singing softly,” the exhibition series title is drawn from a phrase used by Dora María Téllez Argüello, a now-liberated Nicaraguan political prisoner, to describe the singing exercises she did while she was incarcerated in isolation. Helping her to conserve her voice and defeat the political terror she endured, Téllez’s quiet singing became a powerful strategy for survival and resistance. Conceived in three movements, Cantando Bajito features artists who explore similar forms of creative resistance in the wake of widespread gender-based violence.

Cantando Bajito: Chorus, the third and final movement in the exhibition series is an invitation to reflect on the importance of collective making, organizing, and care arising from interdependence in shared struggles. The works illuminate how the coming together of bodies forges power out of precarity. Chorus evokes a twofold meaning: a choral body—an assembly of disparate voices that build together—and the refrain of a song, which carries both a repeating central idea, and a ‘hook’ that draws others in to add their voice. Chorus invites all to enter into a collective performance. This performance aims to reflect what sociologist Leticia Sabsay has called the ‘aesthetics of vulnerability.’ This concept shows the liberating potential of bodies that face vulnerability en masse, rallying against the all-too-present aesthetics of cruelty that seeks to divide people along gendered, sexualized, racialized, and national lines. Chorus is a call to join in a multivocal refrain of resistance transcending dividing lines.  Artworks in Chorus reflect how vulnerability can act as an effective mobilizing force, and the exhibition recognizes the agency of those facing and countering systemic violence together.