Julia Toro / Performance

The Virgin Mary holds the dead body of Jesus. That is the basic characteristic for a scene to transform into a pietá. Michelangelo, Titian, Rubens did theirs. Carlos Leppe, Juan Dávila and Nelly Richard too. It was 1982 when the trio of artists starred in The Bible, a video performance in which the genders were reversed: Dávila held Nelly Richard's body bare-chested. Beside him, Leppe, in a suit, was in front of a table and next to a television. More than thirty years have passed and today the performance carried out at the French Chilean Institute of Culture once again provokes the public at GAM, thanks to the exhibition Julia Toro / Performances.

A disciple of Adolfo Couve in drawing and painting, Toro soon turned to photography, an art in which she has developed an outstanding career. Today, it exhibits fifteen photos that portray the performance of Leppe, Dávila and Richard, along with one organized by Francisco Casas. It is about Art setting, which was made in 1989 at the Cariola Theater.

Although the photos were published in the book Love x Chile, this is the first time they are exhibited in an exhibition. Curated by the photographer herself and her son Mateo Goycolea, the exhibition is held in parallel with a workshop on literature and photography that Julia is giving at GAM with the writer Andrea Jeftanovic.