Exhibition Opening: Cantando Bajito: Testimonies

The Ford Foundation Gallery is pleased to present Cantando Bajito: Testimonies curated by Isis Awad, Roxana Fabius, and Beya Othmani on view March 5 – May 4, 2024.

Please join us for the opening celebration on Tuesday, March 5th, 5 – 7pm.

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.

Cantando Bajito: Testimonies features artists who explore forms of creative resistance in the wake of widespread gender-based violence, and build on strategies to imagine new forms of existing and thriving. The artworks reveal the methods individuals use to navigate violence, including the value of the testimonial, community-building, moving together in space, and subversive, even humorous, gestures that provide sustenance and pleasure. Grounded in a concept of testimony as an act that bears witness publicly, not limited to the spoken or written statement, Testimonies considers artworks as testimonial objects that carry a political memory of feminized bodies. 

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

Image: Leonilda González, Novias revolucionarias I (Revolutionary brides I), 1968. Courtesy of Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales (MNAV) Uruguay. Photo Sebastian Bach.