Estados de excepción Favorite 

Practitioner: 

Date: 

Nov 25 2013

Location: 

Mexico City, London, Kabul

Estados de excepción (States of Exception) is series of participatory cultural interventions created for women to freely and joyfully exercise our rights in public and secure environments, currently being produced in Mexico and abroad.


Conceived in response to the growing wave of violence against women in Mexico that forces us to live in a de facto state of exception—outlined in Article 29 of the Mexican Constitution as the suspension of the population’s rights in cases of conflict or war—, the project is centered on the creation of reverse states of exception: time and space-specific interventions in which women can exercise the totality of our rights in public arenas. 

 The first State of Exception is a four-course meal for 20 passerby women that takes place in a public streets or plazas. This apparently modest gesture—transporting an event that would normally take place in private settings to public spheres—produces a remarkable effect: it not only empowers each of the women participants but also delineates, for both the participants and the audience members, that other ways of being and relating to one another are possible. 

 The project has been presented in Queretaro and Mexico City, Mexico, London, England, and Kabul, Afghanistan between 2013 and 2015.
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