Curated by Isis Awad, Roxana Fabius, and Beya Othmani

Translated into English as “singing softly,” the exhibition series title is drawn from a phrase used by Dora María Téllez Argüello, a now-liberated Nicaraguan political prisoner, to describe the singing exercises she did while she was incarcerated in isolation. Helping her to conserve her voice and defeat the political terror she endured, Téllez’s quiet singing became a powerful strategy for survival and resistance. Conceived in three movements, Cantando Bajito features artists who explore similar forms of creative resistance in the wake of widespread gender-based violence. 

Cantando Bajito: Testimonies features a wide range of artworks that foreground and build on strategies used to confront this violence, to imagine new forms of existing and thriving through and beyond it. The artworks reveal the methods individuals use to navigate violence, including the value of the testimonial, community-building, moving together in space, and subversive, even humorous, gestures that provide sustenance and pleasure. Grounded in a concept of testimony as an act that bears witness publicly, not limited to the spoken or written statement, Testimonies considers artworks as testimonial objects that carry a political memory of feminized bodies. 

The vocal aspect of testimony is one of the central threads running among the featured artworks, encompassing many bodily forms of expression such as speaking, singing, protesting, taking of space in silence, and other voiced acts, all used to seek individual and collective survival, mobilization, and resistance in the face of oppression and violence. In Testimonies, we also foreground the performance of voice as a metaphor to celebrate its power as “an expression of embodied uniqueness” (Cavarero, 2005), a rehearsal of language outside of patriarchal norms, and an affirmation of agency.

With special thanks to members of the Cantando Bajito curatorial advisory group: María Carri, Zasha Colah, Maria Catarina Duncan, Kobe Ko, Marie Hélène Pereira, Mindy Seu, and Susana Vargas Cervantes.

Image: Leonilda González, Novias revolucionarias I (Revolutionary brides I), 1968. Courtesy of Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales (MNAV) Uruguay. Photo Sebastian Bach.

Leonilda González works are courtesy of:

About the curators

Isis Awad

Isis Awad is a curator, writer, and poet from Cairo, Egypt. She is the Founding Director of Executive Care*, a self-as-organization curatorial practice at the service of trans and queer artists of color from performance and nightlife. She also organizes national conferences aiming to find solutions for youth homelessness as Events Manager with the nonprofit organization, Point Source Youth. She was Exhibitions and Development Manager at Participant Inc in New York from 2018-19, and the MFA Exhibition Coordinator at The Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College from 2021-2022. Her writing has been published by The Brooklyn Rail, ArtAsiaPacific Magazine, Art Papers, BOMB Magazine, Topical Cream, and Movement Research Journal.

Roxana Fabius

Roxana Fabius is a Uruguayan curator and art administrator based in New York City. Between 2016 and 2022 she was Executive Director at A.I.R. Gallery, the first artist-run feminist cooperative space in the U.S. During her tenure at A.I.R. she organized programs and exhibitions with artists and thinkers such as Gordon Hall, Elizabeth Povinelli, Jack Halberstam, Che Gosset, Regina José Galindo, Lex Brown, Kazuko, Zarina, Mindy Seu, Naama Tzabar, and Howardena Pindell among many others. These exhibitions, programs and special commissions were made in collaboration with international institutions such as the Whitney Museum, Google Arts and Culture, The Feminist Institute, and Frieze Art Fair in New York and London. Fabius has served as an adjunct professor for the Curatorial Practices seminar at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, and Tel Aviv University. She has also taught at Parsons at The New School, City University of New York, Syracuse University, and Rutgers University. She is currently curating the 2024 exhibition series “Cantando Bajito” at the Ford Foundation Gallery.

Beya Othmani

Beya Othmani is an art curator and researcher from Algeria and Tunisia, dividing her time between Tunis and New York. Currently, she is the C-MAP Africa Fellow at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. Her recent curatorial projects include the Ljubljana 35th Graphic Arts Biennial and Publishing Practices #2 at Archive Berlin. Previously, she took part in the curatorial teams of various projects with sonsbeek20→24 (2020), the Forum Expanded of the Berlinale (2019), and the Dak’Art 13 Biennial (2018), among others, and was a curatorial assistant at the Berlin-based art space, SAVVY Contemporary. Some of her latest curatorial projects explored radical feminist publishing practices, post-colonial histories of print-making, and the construction of racial identities in art in colonial and post-colonial Africa.

Sheba Chhachhi

Gabrielle Goliath

Leonilda González

Lalitha Lajmi

Kent Monkman

Tuli Mekondjo

Sylvia Netzer

Abigail Reyes

Dima Srouji

Keioui Keijaun Thomas

Exhibition installation information

An installation of a brick-lady sculpture on a gray pedestal in front of a dark purple wall with text “Cantando Bajito: Testimonies”. To the right of the wall is a gold-metallic door frame; and a white wall with some text, titled with the header “Ford Foundation Gallery”.Sebastian Bach
Gallery interior with light lavender walls and a gray floor. A three by three steel-tray installation sits in the middle of the floor. In the background above a white desk, the wall has text with header “Cantando Bajito: Testimonies”. To the right is an arrangement of fifteen framed black and white photographs.Sebastian Bach
Gallery interior with light lavender walls and a gray floor. On the left wall is an arrangement of fifteen framed black and white photographs depicting protest movements. On the right wall is a painting featuring a blue and white pattern.Sebastian Bach
Gallery interior with light lavender walls and a gray floor. On the floor is a three by three steel-tray installation. On the wall are several artworks in a line. From left to right, one blue and white patterned painting, then five framed woodcuts, then a brown canvas with various painted and embroidered elements.Sebastian Bach
Gallery interior with two light lavender walls with an aisle down the middle leading to a dark room with a video installation. On the left wall is a brown canvas artwork, and two framed watercolor paintings. On the right wall is an acrylic painting, and an artwork installation of long ribbons of white paper hanging vertically and in dipped arcs. On the floor is a three by three steel-tray installation.Sebastian Bach
Gallery interior with light lavender walls and a gray floor. An acrylic painting is mounted on the left wall. And an artwork installation of long ribbons of white paper is hanging vertically and in dipped arcs in the middle. And on the right wall, are three photographs mounted on the wall - the photos have a central Black femme person in different poses.Sebastian Bach
Gallery interior with light lavender walls and a gray floor. A part of an artwork installation of long ribbons of white paper is hanging to the left, and on the wall are three photographs mounted on the wall depicting a Black femme person in different poses. And to the right is a large monitor showing a bright red screen with black text captions at the bottom.Sebastian Bach
Gallery interior with a gray floor and light lavender walls with an aisle down the middle leading to a dark room with a video installation. There are several artworks displayed including paintings, photographs, canvas mounted on the wall and a hanging white paper ribbon installation and steel tray installation on the floor.Sebastian Bach
Gallery interior with a gray floor and light lavender walls with an aisle down the middle leading to a dark room with a video installation. To the right is a gold-metallic door frame. There are several artworks displayed including paintings, photographs, and a canvas mounted on the wall and a hanging white paper ribbon installation, and steel tray installation on the floor.Sebastian Bach
Gallery interior with light lavender walls and a gray floor. To the right is an opening to a dark room with a video installation. There are several artworks displayed including paintings, etchings, photographs, and a canvas mounted on the wall and a hanging white paper ribbon installation, and steel tray installation on the floor.Sebastian Bach
Gallery interior with light lavender walls and a gray floor. There are several artworks displayed including paintings, etchings, and photographs mounted on the wall and a hanging white paper ribbon installation, and steel tray installation on the floor.Sebastian Bach
Two rectangular screens in a screening room with dark purple walls and gray carpeted floor. On the walls is text relating to the artwork installation. There is a seating arrangement on the floor of two wooden benches and several cushion pods.Sebastian Bach
A corner of a screen in a screening room with dark purple walls and gray carpeted floor. There is a seating arrangement on the floor of two wooden benches and several cushion pods.On the walls is text relating to the artwork installation. There is a middle aisle in between the walls leading to another gallery interior with light lavender walls.Sebastian Bach
Sculpture of terracotta bricks approximating the shape of a reclining woman in front of a purple wall.

Sylvia Netzer

(United States, b. 1944)
Glen-Gery Olympia, 2004 
Carved brick and encaustic
29 x 31 x 84 inches
Photo Sebastian Bach

Fifteen framed black and white photographs arranged on a light lavender wall.

Sheba Chhachhi

(Ethiopia, b. 1958, lives and works in India)
From the Barricades, 1980-97
Archival pigment prints
Dimensions variable
All photos by ©Sheba Chhachhi
Installation Photo Sebastian Bach

Captions for all 15 photographs linked here

A three by three grid installation of large steel trays on the floor. Some trays are filled with dirt and glass vessels.

Dima Srouji

(Palestine, b. 1990, lives and works in London)
Maternal Exhumations II, 2023
Steel trays, glass vessels, soil
The glass vessels were produced by the Twam family workshop in Jaba’, Palestine
118 x 118 x 6 inches
Photo Sebastian Bach

Painting featuring a blue and white pattern layered with an image of a semi-nude figure with long hair and high heels.

Kent Monkman

(Canada, b. 1965) 
I am nipiy, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
72 x 54 inches

Five framed woodcuts installed side by side on a light lavender wall.

Leonilda González

(Uruguay, 1923-2017)
Novias revolucionarias (Revolutionary brides), 1968-69
Left to Right: I, V, II, XI, IV
Woodcut
Courtesy of Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales (MNAV) Uruguay
Photo Sebastian Bach

Image transfer on canvas with various painted-elements that features a group photo under an array of red dots. There are red and blue embroidered-lines layered on top of the image evocative of topographic maps.

Tuli Mekondjo

(Angola, b. 1982, lives and works in Namibia)
Omalutu etu, omeli medu eli/ Our bodies are within this soil, 2022 
Image transfer, resin, acrylic ink, cotton embroidery thread, and rusted cotton fabric on canvas
74.4 x 48.25 inches
Courtesy the Artist and Hales Gallery, London and New York
Photo by JSP Art

Two framed watercolor illustrations in vertical orientation hanging side by side on a light blue wall.

Lalitha Lajmi

(India, 1932-2023)
Performers series, 2011, 2013
Watercolor
Courtesy of Art & Soul, Mumbai
Photo Sebastian Bach

Two rectangular screens in a screening room with dark purple walls and gray carpeted floor. On the walls is text relating to the artwork installation. There is a seating arrangement on the floor of two wooden benches and several cushion pods.

Gabrielle Goliath

(South Africa, b. 1983)
This song is for…, 2019-
2-channel video installation
Dimensions variable
Photo Sebastian Bach

Painting of an interior scene in which a child reaches toward a small bird on a windowsill while two other children sleep in their beds.

Kent Monkman

(Canada, b. 1965) 
Compositional Study for The Sparrow, 2023
Acrylic on canvas
43 x 36 inches

Long ribbons of white paper hanging vertically and in dipped arcs; the artwork is in front of a light lavender wall.

Abigail Reyes

(El Salvador, b. 1984)
Plana, 2014
Rice paper, typed text
Dimensions variable
Photo Sebastian Bach

Gallery interior with light lavender walls and a gray floor. A part of an artwork installation of long ribbons of white paper is hanging to the left, and on the wall are three photographs mounted on the wall depicting a Black femme person in different poses. And to the right is a large monitor showing a bright red screen with black text captions at the bottom.Sebastian Bach

Keioui Keijaun Thomas

(United States, b. 1989)

Partitions of Separation and Trespassing: Section 1. Selective Seeing, Part 2. Looking While Seeing Through, Section 2. Painted Images, Colored Symbols, Part 3. Sweet like Honey, Black like Syrup, Human Resources Los Angeles (HRLA), Los Angeles, CA, 2015
C-print
Photo by Hector Martinez
16 x 24 inches

Snatched n’ Tucked, Field Day, Party Streamer, Ocean Dancer aka Video Vixen aka Hoe 4Life, (Cheer, Leading), 2019
C-print
Photo by Andrea Abbatangelo
30 x 45 inches

Drop Me In The Sea, Fishy (REALNESS), Shopping Basket aka Auction Block aka Stripper Stage, Bricky (Femme-hood), 2019
C-print
Photo by Andrea Abbatangelo
30 x 45 inches

BLACK BODIES, 2018-2021
Closed-captioned video, hot-red, 1 loop with voice/audio, 1 loop without voice/audio
9:21

Photo Sebastian Bach