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Edith Medina

Monday, 02 June 2014 13:43 Written by Josefína Alcazar
 
Performance was the trigger that enabled Edith Medina (Mexico, 1979) to externalize her fears, concerns and unease, and celebrate her qualities as a woman.  She grew up with dolls, Barbie dolls and catwalks, wishing obsessively to be perfect and conform to the stereotype of a beautiful woman.
 
Her curiosity to learn about new art forms led her to enroll in a performance workshop. She had heard about the discipline, and was attracted to it as it exceeded parameters and limits, and because of its intimate, direct approach to the body.
 
Performance allows her to develop a free creativity, use a variety of tools to demonstrate what bothers her and express openly and unflinchingly that she suffered from eating disorders to achieve the vision of a beautiful woman. In 2004, she carried out a performance at Chabacano Metro station, called Slim Aerobics: 30 minutes will change your life. This involved an aerobics session that sold the illusion of losing weight in 30 minutes. Medina carried out choreographies with several machines, while listening to a recording with expression such as “I am unhappy with my body”, “I cannot lose weight”, ‘I am fat’. In this way, Edith criticizes the ubiquitous advertising promising weight loss in a unrealistically short space of time.
 
She studied International Relations at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and began her artistic career in 2000. Her work has tended towards the field of humans’ relationship with machines, therefore her research has focused on the social context of technology in Latin America.
 
Since 2004, she has researched and taught on the relationship between Art, Science and Technology, specializing in the area of Bioart, teaching several courses and coordinating research into the body and science.
Medina considers that the magic of performance lies in the fact that it is an alternative means of communication and reaching the collective subconscious, enabling artists to express their thoughts on themselves or another topic.
 
She is convinced that art is her life and is seriously committed to action art. She is involved in international relations by training, a researcher by conviction and an activist by profession.

Source: Documentary series by Performance Women in Action, Josefina Alcázar (compiler), 2006.
Read 2715 times Last modified on Monday, 02 June 2014 13:45