ANSWERS TO A TIME: MARÍA TERESA HINCAPIÉ 1987- 2006

Gathering photographic and video documentations of actions carried out over nineteen years and unpublished archive material, the exhibition is based on an exhaustive review of Hincapié's personal archive in order to amplify the voice and perspective of an artist who dedicated her life and body in search of the sacred from the simplest acts such as walking, breathing, sowing, cleaning and organizing. Through a practice devoid of speeches and theoretical structures and that, intuitively, turned towards silence and contemplation, Hincapié managed to build a viewpoint that criticized the reigning pragmatism in consumer society and defended nature by recovering the sacred.

Using only her body dressed in a black outfit of great simplicity, an absolutely slow movement, an empty space with a concrete floor, and a bit of live grass that grew from the joints and corners, María Teresa Hincapié elaborated Divina Proporción (Divine Proportion) (1996 ), her second performance awarded by the jury of the National Artists' Hall of Colombia. When seen in the light of our new reality, Divina Proporción, emotional and intense, is enhanced in relevance and meaning and is positioned as the central piece of the exhibition.

Likewise, the exhibition aims to recall a series of values ​​that run through the performances that make it up: Hincapié reminds us that pause and solitude lead us to consciousness, that austerity is synonymous with beauty, that the congruence of man and his environment are essential, that the mistreatment of Mother Earth generates imbalance, that walking is a powerful tool of knowledge, that the everyday can become a revealing ritual, and that the search for the sacred allows us to find meaning in life.

María Teresa Hincapié was born in Armenia in 1954 and died in Bogotá in 2008. She trained as an actress by joining the group Acto Latino led by Juan Monsalve in 1978, and for nine years she studied the theories of Jerzy Grotowski and Eugenio Barba. In 1986, after performing "Ondina", she left the theater and embarked on a personal and intimate path that led her to art performance. In 1987, she performed Si esto fuera el principio de infinito (If this were the beginning of infinity), her first performance piece, which would become an important antecedent of subsequent actions carried out in the late 80s and early 90s. She carried out her performances in renowned institutions, salons and biennials between which stand out: The Insitute of Contemporary Art, in London; XXXIII Salón Nacional de Artistas, in which she was awarded the first prize for her performance Una cosa es una cosa (A thing is a thing); Reina Sofía Museum, Madrid, Spain; MAM, Paris, France; 51 Venice Biennale, Italy; Bienal de Sao Paulo, Brazil; Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum, Miami, United States.

In November 2020, the Madrid gallery 1 Mira Madrid, in collaboration with Casas Riegner, held the first posthumous exhibition in Europe dedicated to the life and work of the artist. In the second semester of 2022, the Museum of Modern Art of Medellín will present in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona,​​the first institutional exhibition dedicated to the work of Hincapié.