Mexico City’s Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporaneo (MUAC) has taken down two works by Ana Gallardo in the Argentinian artist’s current solo exhibition Tembló acá un delirio.
The work that sparked criticism, Extracto para un fracasado proyecto (Extract from a Failed Project, 2011–24), features an unpunctuated text etched across a museum wall which narrates the artist’s engagement with Estela, a former resident at Casa Xochiquetzal, a Mexico City shelter for elderly sex workers. The text describes Estela as an ‘old sick whore’ who she visited and cared for before Estela’s death.
According to the museum, Extracto para un fracasado proyecto belongs to a larger body of work addressing the struggles and frustrations the artist faced in ‘a society that abandons its elderly’. However the language used was negatively received, especially among members of Casa Xochiquetzal. On 9 October the shelter published a statement on Facebook describing Gallardo’s text as containing ‘insults’ as well as ‘lies’.
‘Ana Gallardo uses as an insult the word “whore” and the expression “daughter of a whore” repeatedly, which if in themselves are misogynous insults, when directed precisely to Casa Xochiquetzal, to its then director and its inhabitants, become even more serious,’ the statement writes.
‘That person didn’t spend “some time” taking care of Estela, as the piece says, but she did it one day and never came back… If she had been near the house, she would know that the words “prostitute” and “whore” are painful words for the inhabitants of the Casa, and now with this piece she is revictimising them and pushing people to name them that way.’
MUAC initially responded with a statement defending the artist’s freedom of expression. As protests escalated, however, it first limited audience entering the space. Then, after graffiti was written on its exterior walls – reading ‘Total Respect for Sex Work’ and calling the museum as ‘whorephobic’ – the museum yesterday took down the piece.
