The most controversial work of ARCO: a live vagina closure surgery

One of the works that has attracted the most attention at the ARCO contemporary art fair has been that of the Peruvian artist Winnye Minerva, who recorded a surgical operation for a ‘partial occlusion’ of her vagina and has decided to sell this document next to a large painting for a price that will be around 15,000 euros.

It is a video installation in which the recording of that surgery to close her own vagina is played. “I had no connection to my vagina or identified my gender with it, so I did this operation that has covered three quarters of my organ and there is only the hole for menstruation”, explained the artist from Lima.

As he has revealed, at first he had recorded the intervention – it was difficult for him to find a surgeon, as he pointed out – for “personal record” and finally has exhibited it under the title ‘Close to open’ at the Ginsberg stand within the Opening section for new creators.

“I tried within feminism to identify myself with my vagina, but I couldn’t. I don’t use it, I don’t want to be a mother and I made this decision. I looked for surgeons, but there was no operation to close almost three quarters of the hole; so I decided to create that operation. I found a surgeon who did something similar, more to restore it than to close it, but he agreed”, he explained in statements to the Being Chain.

Other main works of ARCO

The new edition of ARCO will also host a work with a drawing of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, surrounded by names of leaders “of the extreme left” such as Lenin, Stalin or Mao Zedong, and will also give prominence to a piece with the dictator Franco with a target painted on his face.

In the case of the portrait of Sánchez, it is the work of the Finnish artist -based in Spain for years- Riiko Sakkinen, at the Forsblom gallery, who has already has attracted attention in previous editions of the art fair. In fact, he assures that this piece represents “the end of a trilogy” that began with a portrait of the King Emeritus in 2019 and another of Franco in 2020 accompanied by the title ‘Franco was not as bad as they say’.

Now, the piece entitled ‘My Favorite Leaders of the Far Left’ it shows the head of a Pedro Sánchez with a slight smile, with names to the right and left: Evo Morales, Hugo Chávez, Pol Pot or Fidel Castro, among others. The price of the work is 16,000 euros.

In addition, the José de la Mano gallery -which last year was the media star thanks to its ‘Guernica’ by Ibarrola- recovers the work of significant Basque artists in this edition and, among them, that of Ramón Bilbao, who in 1975 , coinciding with the last ones shot by the Franco regime, began a series of paintings to show this political situation.

One of them is a drawing of Franco’s face with a cross superimposed -the price is 12,000 euros-. But there are also pieces by the same artist from a group of people both executed and pardoned -this piece reaches 25,000 euros- and also from ministers or relevant people during the Spanish dictatorship, such as Santiago Carrillo or Cardinal Tarancón -12,000 euros-.