Lorena Wolffer
Mientras dormíamos (el caso Juárez) (While We Were Sleeping – the Juárez Case)
A visual artist and cultural activist, her work has been shown internationally. She defines her work as “cultural interventions” and has long worked at the intersection of art, activism, and civic action. She has a significant career as an independent promoter and in disseminating art, having co-created, co-written, and hosted several television and radio series. She has received grants from the Ford Foundation (2012), the National System of Art Creators (2007 and 2011), the FONCA Program for the Promotion of Cultural Projects and Co-investments (1999), and the Zellerbach Foundation for the Arts (San Francisco, California, USA, 1998). She has also been distinguished as a Commended Artist by Freedom to Create (Singapore, 2011) and received the Omecíhuatl Medal awarded by Inmujeres DF (Mexico City, 2011). She has extensive experience teaching workshops, and her writings have been published in various cultural magazines, newspapers, and books. She has served as a juror in various programs and grants, and has been a member of councils and academic committees at institutions such as UAM and the Museo de Mujeres Artistas Mexicanas.) (Mónica Mayer
Mientras dormíamos (el caso Juárez) (While We Were Sleeping – the Juárez Case) was conceived to document this tragic reality and expose the permissiveness surrounding violence against women in Ciudad Juárez. Drawing on police reports, the artist used her own body as a symbolic map to document and narrate the violence in fifty of the recorded cases. In a morgue-like setting, the piece involved reproducing, on her own body with a surgical marker, each of the blows, cuts, and gunshot wounds that these women suffered. In this way, her body became a vehicle representing violence against women in Ciudad Juárez, which appeared to be institutionalized. A voice in the background read details of each case as the marks were drawn on her torso, neck, and thighs. The performance aimed to confront the audience with the reality of femicide and make viewers witnesses to women’s suffering.
courtesy Lorena Wolffer
Format
Performance
Document media
video, colour, sound, 10:00 min.
Issue date
2002
To be seen in
re.act.feminism #4 - Archival Chain Reactions, MSUM, Ljubljana, 2026