“Big Bang” by Regina Jose Galindo, June 25, 2014

Guatemalan artist Regina José Galindo’s performance “Big Bang,” addresses the increasingly interconnected dynamics of our global age, presented with the exhibition, “Permission To Be Global/Prácticas Globales: Latin American Art from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection.” It responds to the automobile industry giant General Motors’s June 2009 filing for bankruptcy amidst the market crash already taking effect in the United States. The fall of this transnational corporation deepened the financial collapse in the US and beyond, demonstrating how economic globalization connects us all to ensure that crises reverberate globally. In Big Bang, she sits immobile in a car while a crew of men disassemble it around her, a metaphor for the breakdown and ripple effects of the US automobile industry. This performance is funded by the generous support of the members of the Contemporary Visiting Committee.