Exhibition Opening: Cantando Bajito: Incantations

The Ford Foundation Gallery is pleased to present Cantando Bajito: Incantations curated by Roxana Fabius, Kobe Ko, and Beya Othmani on view June 5 – August 10, 2024.

Please join us for the opening celebration on Wednesday, June 5th, 5 – 7pm.

The second chapter of the year-long series, Cantando Bajito: Incantations, brings together artists who consider ancestral, contemporary, and future-facing networks of support and care that safeguard feminized bodies through forms of knowledge transmission. 

Such networks—symbolic systems, subversive spaces, or covert forms of language—are as varied as the communities that develop them. They include Nüshu, a form of script passed from mother to daughter in China; the use of henna as an agent of protection; and forms of therapeutic communication that have been deemed “gossip.” All have long existed, whether in the shadows or in plain sight. Preserved not in written history but in the body, these channels prepare feminized bodies for potential violence while giving them tools to resist it. 

With special thanks to members of the Cantando Bajito curatorial advisory group: Isis Awad, María Carri, Zasha Colah, Maria Catarina Duncan, Marie Hélène Pereira, Mindy Seu, and Susana Vargas Cervantes.

Image: siren eun young jung, Public yet Private Archive (A Part), 2015, 2024. Courtesy of the Artist.