Cecilia Fajardo-Hill

M aría Evelia Marmolejo, (Cali,

María Evelia
1958) is one of the most radical and
political artists of the 1980s in Latin
America. Active primarily in the 1980s,
her work remains unknown not only

Marmolejo’s
outside of Colombia but in her own
country. Performance art in Latin
America since the 1960s reflects the
history of great experimentation and
political action. A thorough historiog-
raphy of the medium in Latin America

Political Body still needs to be produced as many im-

portant artists continue to be obscured
due to lack of research or interest, and
sometimes prejudice.
The evolution and definition of
performance in Latin America var-
ies1; and in some countries such as
Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Venezu-
ela performance began in the 1960s
and flourished throughout the 1970s
and 1980s. In other countries such
as Mexico, performance started in
the 1970s and thrived in the 1980s;
in the case of Cuba, it started in 1979
throughout the 1980s, and in countries
such as Colombia, performance began
until the 1980s. There are of course im-
portant individual artists in countries
such as Cuba, Guatemala, Puerto Rico,
Uruguay and Peru who developed an
important practice in performance.2 It
goes without saying that performance
continues to be a central practice today
in Latin America.
Born in Cali, Colombia, Marmolejo
started working in the early 80s
making performances and installa-
tions. Much of her work intertwined
preoccupations that have pervaded
throughout her production: the politi-
cal oppression in Colombia in the 1970s
and 1980s3, social and economic condi-
tions in Colombia and Latin America,
environmental issues, and the situation
and role of women, including aspects
related to the representation, func-
tions and symbolic meanings of the
woman’s body.
Marmolejo’s intense period of
production was 1981 to 1985. The rea-

March 11th, 1981. Gallery San Diego, Bogotá, Colombia.

10 min. Documentary photograph. Photo: Camilo Gómez.

2 ArtNexus

Anonymous 1, 1981. Plazoleta of Centro Administrativo Municipal in Cali (CAM), Colombia. 20 min.
Documentary photograph. Photo: Fabio Arango.
sons for her virtually stopping to do
artwork, and for history to erase her
memory, are multiple and complex,
and some are of personal nature; the
main being that Marmolejo self-exiled
herself to Madrid, Spain, while preg-
nant in 1985 and after this year, she
only produced two performances,
in 1992 and 2004. Another explana-
tion is that not enough research has
been done in this field and in recent
historiography María Teresa Hincapié
(her importance is unquestioned)
is presented as the first important
performance artist in Colombia with
work from the late 1980s, even though
María Evelia Marmolejo—and other
artists—was making performance
years earlier. The second explana-
tion to this erasure is that the best
known performance by the artist is
11 de marzo, 1981 which may have
been remembered and interpreted in
a prejudiced and limited fashion to
be circumscribed to the “essential-
ist feminine” and the controversial,
thus defining her in a limited fashion.
For example, in the catalogue Arte ≠
Vida from the Museo del Barrio, 2008,
María Iovino describes 11 de marzo as
the “(…) First feminist performance
DESIGN
Anonymous 1, 1981. Plazoleta of Centro Administrativo Municipal in Cali
(CAM), Colombia. 20 min. Documentary photograph. Photo: Fabio Arango.
piece in Colombia in 1981” but re-
Born in Cali, Colombia,
marked that this work (and that of
1984 performance by Antioquia artist Marmolejo started
María Teresa Cano) “remain circum-
scribed within the limitations of a
working in the early 80s
feminine theme.” 4 making performances
Marmolejo studied law between
1976 and 78 but could not fathom her- and installations. Much
self as a lawyer and began studying of her work intertwined
art at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de
Cali. With relatively little knowledge preoccupations that have
of art, and no support, Marmolejo was pervaded throughout her
a strong and mature conceptual artist
from the very beginning of her short production: the political
and intense art career. Marmolejo was
never interested in the conventions
oppression in Colombia in
of art and was strongly engaged with the 1970s and 1980s, social
finding a way of expressing her preoc-
cupations in regards to the political op-
and economic conditions
pression in Colombia during the time in Colombia and Latin
of Turbay Ayala, Colombia’s President,
and also to her own condition as a America, environmental
woman in a male chauvinist society issues, and the situation and
which was imposed on her since an
early age through her education at an role of women, including
all girls school, Catholic upbringing, aspects related to the
and home life, where she was taught
to serve men. representation, functions
In 1979, for her final semester exam,
she realized her first installation titled
and symbolic meanings of
Tendidos, which consisted of a clothes the woman’s body.
ArtNexus 3
line made of sanitary pads—some
used and some clean—which were
tied to one another. The end of the
line was a cloth nappy and the whole
line hung from a butcher’s hook. Mar-
molejo produced this work in protest
for the brutal torture and rape—of-
ten with metal objects—of peasant
and university women, sometimes
pregnant, by the Colombian Army.
From this early performance the artist
started using blood, both as a com-
mon, normal bodily fluid—though
rejected— and as a reflection on the
violence of the country. The aggres-
siveness manifested in the butcher’s
hook also refers to her refusal and
difficulties she faced in her role as
a woman in a macho society and at
home, where she had to be subservi-
ent to four male brothers.
For her final drawing test, she made
a triptych with poster boards where
she drew a line with her own blood
by cutting an incision on her index
Tendidos, 1979. Mixed media installation. Escuela de Bellas Artes, Cali, Colombia.
4 ArtNexus
finger. Marmolejo did not believe that
the only materials for working were
the conventional pencil and brush,
and was attempting to conceptualize
that this was a “drawing” no matter
the shape or the technique. She was
also reflecting on the violence of Co-
lombia through the use of her own
blood and by drawing a line which
was continuous though not straight,
and which inevitably broke between
one cardboard and the next, she repre-
sented the discontinuity and violence
and repression during the Turbay
Ayala regime in Colombia, and other
military regimes in South America
during the 1970s.5
Neither work, despite the artist ex-
plaining their conceptual nature, was
accepted as sculpture or drawing, and
Marmolejo was failed and was forced
to quit art school. The only professor
at art school who became a sort of
mentor to her at the time was Miguel
González, who was the professor of
history of modern art at the Escuela
de Bellas Artes in Cali, and curator of
Museo de Arte Moderno la Tertulia de
Cali. Marmolejo recalls that he trav-
elled often and would discuss with her
what he saw in galleries and museums
and share books and magazines with
the artist. Of lasting importance was
that González introduced Marmolejo
to the Vienna Situationists.
After Marmolejo left art school,
she decided to focus on perfor-
mance. Aside from the Situationists,
Marmolejo recalls Lygia Clark’s
Clothing-Body-Clothing Series, 1967.
In contrast to the conservative nature
of art school in Cali, two years later,
in 1981, the 4ta Bienal de Arte de Me-
dellín took place in parallel with the
1er Coloquio Latinoamericano de Arte
No-Objetual y Arte Urbano. Here, she
recalls, she saw for the first time the
performances of Venezuelan Yeni y
Nan and Carlos Zerpa. At the begin-
ning of the 1980s in Colombia per-
formance was little known, though
some informed curators and artists
were trying to promote performance
such as: Miguel González, Eduardo
Serrano, curator at the Museo de
Arte Moderno in Bogota, Alberto
Sierra curator at the Museo de Arte
de Antioquia en Medellín and one
of the organizers of the 1981 Bienal
and Coloquio in Medellín, and the
conceptual artist Álvaro Barrios, who
was curator at the Museo de Arte
Moderno de Barranquilla.
When Marmolejo was a child, she
did children’s theatre in her neighbor-
hood, under the direction of Fernando
Silva. Also, while at art school she
took a theatre workshop with Ale-
jandro Buenaventura. Marmolejo has
March 11th, 1981. Project sketch on paper.
commented that theatre as a form of
expression was seminal to her since March 11th, 1981. Gallery San Diego, Bogotá, Colombia. 10 min. Documentary photograph. Photo: Camilo Gómez.
childhood6. Performance became thus
the ideal medium that allowed her to
free and channel the anger, repression
and impotence she felt for her condi-
tion as a woman in her social context
and for the political oppression in
her country. As Marmolejo was an
unconventional and challenging artist
and given the issues she addressed in
her works, in her performances she
exposed her body in ways that either
made her extremely vulnerable and/
or involved actions such as cutting
herself, or the contact with matter that
may be seen as repulsive.
Her first performance was Anónimo
1, 1981 at the Plazoleta del Centro Ad-
ministrativo Municipal in Cali. Mar-
molejo dressed in a white tunic and
cap and the face covered in bandages
to denote anonymity, walked silently
over a walkway marked by a line of
white paper. The area was guarded
by police who stopped the public
from getting too close. Shortly after
the beginning of the performance,
Marmolejo sat on the white line and
made cuts under her toes and then
continued walking leaving a blood
trail behind her. The second stage of
the performance consisted of curing
her wounds and continuing to walk
with bandaged toes. The artist had
set a loud clock which ticked during
the action and which went off after
20 minutes ending the performance,

ArtNexus 5
which the artist described as “waking
up from a nightmare.”7
The artist has written that this
performance was in homage to the
tortured and disappeared during the
Turbay Ayala regime. Marmolejo’s self
inflicted wounds and subsequent pro-
cess of healing was a way to bring to
the public’s attention the violence that
was taking place (the public, mostly
male, during this performance was
both disturbed and touched, though
according to the artist, were more
impressed by the blood in the per-
formance than by the daily violence
in Colombia), but also to manifest
the need to heal the pain resulting
from the brutality inflicted on inno-
cent people, and to put an end to the
Residues I, 1983. Installation at Museo de Arte Moderno de Cartagena, Colombia.
6 ArtNexus
situation. Marmolejo’s self-infliction
became a modus operandi for the art-
ist, as her involvement with the issues
she raised was not merely intellectual
or artistic, but visceral, urgent and
compassionate.
11 de marzo, 1982 took place at
the Galería San Diego in Bogotá.
Marmolejo decided on the date of
the performance after she had her
last period to be able to determine
the date of the coming one. In
preparation to the performance she
took some herbal medicines to help
induce her period and guarantee
that it began on March 11th. The
artist arranged paper on the floor in
an L shape, lit the place with black
light, and in the background played
a soundtrack of a toilet flushing.
She wore a white cap and large sec-
tions of her body were covered with
sanitary pads excluding the genitals
so that the blood when she walked
would drip on the floor. She did
a dance where she would rub her
pubis against the wall leaving an
imprint of her blood which dripped
along the wall to the floor. Mar-
molejo had suffered all her life of
very abundant periods and had ex-
perienced the trauma of constantly
staining her clothes with blood and
being teased by people, especially
when she was a young student. This
performance was partly a way to
come to terms with her own body
and its functions. This was a ritual
to the menstruation, something
considered shameful and repug-
nant, to celebrate it as something
natural. Also, the artist, having been
raised Catholic, repelled the Judeo-
Christian conception of the genesis
where the woman was born out of
the rib of Adam, thus establishing
the superiority and power of men
over the women. Through this ritual
she wanted to celebrate women’s
centrality in the origin of life. In
contrast to the Christian tradition,
in this performance she refers to
an ancestral indigenous mythology
that establishes the origin of life in
women, who created man by mix-
ing menstrual blood with mud in
the shape of a phallus and buried
it. Man thus became her companion
and together created new lives. 8
Reading Marmolejo’s work as
circumscribed to an essentialist idea
of the feminine is limited and mis-
leading. In 11 de Marzo, Marmolejo
transforms the period—a weakness,
something negative and traumatic—
into a strength. Her radicalism is
rooted in her frontal rebelliousness
against the fragmentation of the femi-
nine as a sanitized body from what is
perceived as dirty. She is performing
an anti-colonialist act by resorting to
Indigenous belief, thus deconstruct-
ing the power of the Judeo-Christian
religion which establishes woman’s
inferiority, dependency and essential
weakness. Also, her action is freeing
Anonymous 3, 1982. Performed on the polluted banks of the Cauca River, Valley Cauca,
Colombia. Documentary photograph. Photo: Nelson Villegas.
both of her anger and repression, to
the extent that the artist has com-
mented9 that she experienced a climax
in the form of an orgasm at the conclu-
sion of the performance.
Following both a ritualistic aspect
of her work and her political stance,
Marmolejo produced Anónimo 4,
198210, a private performance at the
edges of the Río Cauca, Valle del
Cauca, Colombia, 11 where she dug
a triangle of 1.5 meters, the artist’s
height, filled with layers of human
placentas of births from that same
day in Cali, that the artist had col-
lected from public hospitals. Three
adjacent smaller triangles were filled
with sewage water. The artist tied
placentas to her body with plastic
strips and stood on the placentas in
the larger triangle while reflecting
and experiencing “the fear of com-
ing to this world in a society where
survival is not guaranteed.” 12 The
artist in personal conversation has
Anonymous 4, 1982. Performed on the banks of Río Cauca, Colombia. Documentary
photograph. Photo: Nelson Villegas.
described that the pungent smell of
the decaying placentas was over-
whelming and this, combined with
her reflections, produced strong reac-
tions of vomiting and crying.
The issue of the environment is
of great importance to the artist13.
Anónimo 3, 1982 14 is another private
performance Marmolejo did at the
edges of the Río Cauca, for which she
wrote: “A ritual to the Mother Earth
was produced as an act of forgiveness
for the pollution and destruction of
the flora and fauna.”15 This contami-
nated river was emblematic of the pol-
lution that industries are producing
all over the world by throwing their
chemicals in rivers, thus altering the
biodiversity of the flora and fauna.
The performance, which lasted 15
minutes, consisted of a healing ritual
where she partially covered her body
with surgical tape and gauze covered
her face. Marmolejo drew a spiral
with quicklime, and in the center
placed a toilet bowl where she did a
vaginal wash, letting her fluids fall to
the ground, thus fertilizing the earth
that had been polluted and fragments
of the soaked tape and gauze where
arranged on the soil.
Performances such as Residuos I,
1983 and Residuos II, 198416, combine
both her preoccupation for ecological
destruction and violence resulting
from the exploitation of oil. For these
works she created installation of ob-
jects, containers and bags filled with
organic matter such as urine, animal
tripe, blood, and other matter. For Re-
siduos II, the artist included a fetus in a
compressed bag together with a used
sanitary pad installed with other bags
of organic matter. The fetus stood for
a “discarded baby” in response to an
article the artist read on child mortal-
ity before the age of 5. The artist wrote
biographical information on her back
and stood by the installation for 5 min-
utes for people to read the information.
ArtNexus 7
 In 1985 when the artist was two
months pregnant she self-exiled to
Madrid. That same year, Marmolejo
heard of the preparations for the
celebrations of the 500 years of the
discovery of America. As a result,
the same year on October 12 th, she
did the performance América, at the
Plaza Colón in Madrid, in protest
to these coming celebrations. Mar-
molejo proposed that instead of
a celebration, this date should be
established as a day of mourning,
because it marked the beginning
of colonialism in America and the
death of 67 million natives. For the
action, Marmolejo distributed a
sheet with excerpts from Fray Bar-
tolomé de la Casas’, Breve Destruc-
ción de las Indias, (written in 1542
and published in 1552) describing
the destruction and violence of the
Spaniards against the Indians. She
wrote the word “América” on the
pedestal of the Colón statue, with
blood from cuts in her fingers, and
América, 1985. Plaza Colón Madrid, Spain, 10 min. Documentary photograph. Photo: Gilberto Villamil.
8 ArtNexus
then broke a mirror her size and
placed the pieces in a basket and dis-
tributed them amongst the public, as
a symbol of the return of the mirrors
that were brought to America during
the Conquest. The police arrested
the artist for a few hours.
As we have observed through-
out the performances described,
Marmolejo is a radical and political
artist; we may call her ‘feminist’,
involved in compelling issues relat-
ing to her role as a woman, political
crisis, oppression, colonialism and
ecology. It is not possible to dis-
sect the gender issues from broader
political concerns involving society
as a whole, or to establish some
“essentialist” feminine and isolate
it from, for example, the ideological
oppression of religion that she so
strongly opposes. Even the ritualis-
tic aspects of the artist’s work have
a political underpinning, whereas an
anti-colonialist act, liberating from
repression, or a healing vehicle, it
cannot be reduced to a form of es-
sentialism.
The ultimate performance the art-
ist did is Sesquilé, December 5, 198517
where she proposed the birth of her
child as a work of art. She invited sev-
eral spectators and a photographer18
to witness the event, though she was
so engrossed in the pain of childbirth
that she became oblivious of the
public. Marmolejo was atheistic at
the time, nevertheless conceptualized
that as an artist she was a “creator,”
in this case the creator of a new life
which was an extension of her being.
She was, ironically and against the
established patriarchal masculine
‘God’, her own ‘god.’
María Evelia Marmolejo’s work
will be on view in the fall of 2013 at
the Museum of Latin American Art,
Long Beach, in the context of the his-
torical exhibition The Political Body:
Radical Women in Latin American Art:
1960-1985, which is curated by Cecilia
Fajardo-Hill and Andrea Giunta.
Notes
1. The definition of performance in this article is broad
and may be based on Juan Acha’s term “no-objetual-
ismo” (non-objectualism) and encompasses: perfor-
mances, happenings, actions, and photo (Anna Maria
Maiolino) and video performances (Sonia Andrade) and
private meetings (Mónica Mayer Dinner Party, 1979)
i.e., live art forms done in private. Marmolejo herself
described her actions as “arte corporal” (body art) and
it has been often the case in Latin América that artists,
particularly in the 70s and 80s preferred not to use the
term performance to define a practice that was not
necessarily circumscribed by this imported term. A case
in question is Mexican artist Maris Bustamante.
2. Some Latin American artists that produced actions,
happenings and/or did performance between the 1960s
and 1980s are listed below. In most cases the date only
denotes when the artist started producing performances,
as many continued active for decades: Argentina 1960s:
Gloria Carnevali, Eduardo Costa, Alberto Greco, Roberto
Jacoby, David Lamelas, Lea Lublin, Oscar Masotta, Marta
Minujin, Margarita Paksa; 1970s: Victor Grippo. Brazil
1960s: Lygia Clark, Nelson Leirner, Helio Oiticica, Lygia
Pape; 1970s: Sonia Andrade, Artur Barrio, Anna Bella
Geiger, Anna Maria Maiolino, Antonio Manuel, Cildo
Meireles, Teresina Soares, Celeida Tostes, Regina Vater.
Chile 1960s: Cecilia Vicuña; 1970s: Grupo CADA, Diamela
Eltit, Carlos Leppe, Lotte Rosenfeld, Raúl Zurita. Cuba:
José Bedia, Flavio Garcilandia, Manuel Mendive, Aldito
Menéndez, Glexis Novoa, Gustavo Pérez Monzón, Juan
Francisco Elso Padilla, Ricardo Rodríguez Brey, Leandro
Soto, Rubén Torres Llorca, and the collectives Arte Calle
and Grupo Provisional. México 1970s: Maris Bustamante,
Lourdes Grobet, Felipe Ehrenberg, Alejandro Jodorowsky
(Chile), Mónica Mayer, Grupo Pentágono, No Grupo;
1980s: Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Polvo de Gallina Negra,
Jesusa Rodríguez, Tlacuilas y Retrateras. Venezuela 1960s:
Alberto Brandt, Rolando Peña, Techo de la Ballena; 1970s:
Diego Barbosa, Antonieta Sosa, Pedro Terán, Yeni y Nan;
1980s: Teowald D’Arango, Marco Antonio Ettedgi, Héctor
Fuenmayor, Alfred Wenemoser, Carlos Zerpa. Colombia Sesquilé, 1985. Hospital Anglo-Americano, Madrid, Spain. Documentary photograph. Photo: Sara Rosemberg.
1980s: María Teresa Cano, María Teresa Hincapié, María
Evelia Marmolejo, Sara Modiano, Rosemberg Sandoval. 7. Artist written description of performance from 1981 Table in New York. For this, she wrote with blood from
Singular artists that may be mentioned are: Margarita and edited in 2010-2011. her fingers the word Amazonas on a wall that projected
Azurdia (Guatemala), Felipe Buendía, Teresa Burga and 8. She overheard the ancestral indigenous myth during the name of the toxic chemicals that were sent by the
Yvonne von Mollendorf (Peru), Ana Mendieta (Cuba), her conversations with people that had contact with USA to fumigate against coca plantations which are
Rafael Montañez Ortiz (Puerto Rico/USA), Nelbia Romero indigenous groups from Choco’s rainforest in Colombia. desctructive to the ecosystem.
(Uruguay) and many others. 9. Personal conversations with the artist in February 10th 14. Anónimo 3 was presented at VIII Salón Atenas,
3. The artist has explained that oppression, violence and and November 11th of 2011. Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, Colombia as photo
political persecution had existed in Colombia since the 10. Recorded on video and presented at the VIII Salón and video documentation.
1940s. Her biological father was killed for being con- Atenas Bogotá in 1982, and at the Contemporary Art 15. Artist written statement from 1982 and edited in
servative and also they tried to kill her adoptive father Museum and Art Gallery in Guayaquil, Ecuador, in 1984. 2010-2011
because he was liberal. Personal Correspondence with 11. The artists wrote on this work: “According to UNI- 16. Performance that took place in the IV Salon Regional
the artist, January 25, 2012. CEF’s statistics, every year 11 thousand children die of de Artes Visuales Culcultura, Pasto Colombia.
4. María Iovino “María Teresa Hincapié: Action, Corpo- starvation, thirst and cold in Latin America. I question 17. Though this is not her last performance as she did
reality, and the Realm of the Feminine in Colombia” in how pleasant it is to come to a world where there is two more actions in 1992 and 2004.
Arte Vida: Actions by Artists of the Americas 1960-2000. no aid nor comfort for a newborn?” This action was 18. The photographer got so nervous in observing the
Deborah Cullen Ed., (New York: El Museo del Barrio, exhibited at VIII Salón Atenas, Museo de Arte Moderno artist in labor pain that opened the camera and the
2008) p. 216. Though, in personal conversation with de Bogotá, Colombia and in 1984 at the Museo de film was destroyed. Only one photograph was saved.
the Colombian art critic Eduardo Serrano in Bogotá in Arte Contemporáneo y Pinacoteca de Guayaquil, Ec- Amongst the spectators was the Spanish critic Carlos
2010, he brought to my attention the importance and uador. Artist written statement from 1982 and edited Jiménez who never divulged the event.
radicalism of this performance. in 2010-2011.
5. The artist has commented that she was informed and 12. Artist written statement from 1982 and edited in Cecilia Fajardo-Hill
well aware of the political turmoil in other countries 2010-2011
British/Venezuelan art historian and curator.
in Latin America and her work not only addressed the 13. In 2004, twelve years after producing her last per-
political situation in Colombia but also other countries. formance, Marmolejo did the performance: Amazons, She is currently chief curator at the Museum
6. Personal correspondence with the artist, January Fusarium, Oxysporum, Glyphosate at the Wilmer Jenning of Latin American Art, MoLAA, in Long
19, 2012. Gallery, with the cooperation of Latino Artists Round Beach, California.

ArtNexus 9