Regina José Galindo “Who Can Erase The Traces?” (2003)

woman leaving bloody footprints

Regina José Galindo, Quién puede borrar las huellas? (Who can erase the traces?, 2003), performance, Guatemala City, photo: José Osorio

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In her most celebrated work, Who Can Erase the Traces? (¿Quién puede borrar las huellas?, 2003), she walked barefoot through the streets of Guatemala City, from the Palacio Nacional de la Cultura to the Corte de Constitucionalidad, carrying a basin filled with human blood into which she periodically dipped her feet. The trail of footprints visualized her reaction to the recent news that Efraín Ríos Montt, a former military dictator responsible for the most destructive period of the country’s internal conflict, had been permitted to run for president despite constitutional prohibitions. In this work, the line between Galindo’s body as object and subject was so subtle that the blood covering her feet appeared to be her own; she embodied the war’s victims, taking their blood as hers and appropriating their suffering.