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Polvo de Gallina Negra: Evil Eye and Other Feminist Recipes

Maris Bustamante and Mónica Mayer created the feminist art group Polvo de Gallina Negra (PGN) in Mexico City in June of 1983, initially in collaboration with fellow artist Herminia Dosal. By experimenting with the languages of contemporary art, including mail art, performance, and interventions in the mass media (e.g., television, newspapers, radio), PGN sought to deconstruct the traditional images of femininity that circulate Mexico and, in the process, to analyze and critique sexist stereotypes.

For ten years, PGN pursued conceptually and experimentally based art projects that would reach a wide audience, striving to raise awareness about the gender inequities embedded in Mexican society as well as the inequalities that dominate the art system.

The exhibition Polvo de Gallina Negra: Evil Eye and Other Feminist Recipes presents a decade of the group's work, in dialogue with the individual careers of each of its , their subsequent trajectories, and their legacy as taken up by younger Latin American artists. The exhibition is divided into three sections spanning five decades of artistic production, starting prior to the group's formation, and concluding after its dissolution, reactivating pieces and projects that remain highly relevant today. The first section, De antes de aquellos polvos (Before All That Dust), features work that Maris Bustamante produced both individually and as part of the No-Grupo collective, as well as work Mónica Mayer made before she and Bustamante formed PGN. The section on Polvo de Gallina Negra (Black Hen Dust) itself focuses on actions carried out by Maris Bustamante and Mónica Mayer, connecting strategies drawn from activism, urban interventions, and their previous work, grounded in humor, direct action, and the deployment of public space. This section also includes the piece La Fiesta de XV años (The Quinceañera Party), which reflects on deeply rooted rituals in Mexican and Latin American culture.The final section, Pospolvo. Reactivaciones (Post-Dust. Reactivations), brings together original pieces made after the group's dissolution and a retrieval of earlier works, carried out by Maris Bustamante, Mónica Mayer, and artists and activists who have reprised their legacy.

Nearly forty years after PGN's formation, we celebrate a lineage of Latin American feminist artists who still have much to tell us, and who have made an important impact on Mexico.

Museo Amparo presents this exhibition, organized by Centro Nacional de Arte Contemporáneo Cerrillos, in collaboration with Cátedra Extraordinaria Rosario Castellanos de Arte y Género.

Mónica Mayer | Artist

Maris Bustamante | Artist

María Laura Rosa | Curator

Julia Antivilo Peña | Curator