FRANCISCA BENÍTEZ

(Santiago, 1974)

A multidisciplinary artist, Benítez works with documentation, video-installation, and performance, while seeking to expand the limits of what may be termed the discourse of otherness. In Untitled (1) Prosthesis of the New Exodus (2006), the artist presents a series of photographic works inspired by an annual event carried out in Orthodox Jew neighborhoods in Brooklyn, where temporary outdoor structures are built to commemorate the Exodus, dramatically altering the cityscape. Has dado al mundo tus canciones (You Have Given the World Your Songs, 2018), on the other hand, takes as its starting point a 1947 lithograph by African-American artist Elizabeth Catlett to present a poem in American Sign Language (ASL) that reflects upon freedom and the role of art in its coming to being.