Defecting Witness: The Difficulty in Watching Regina José Galindo's PERRA

In 2005, Guatemalan artist Regina José Galindo carved the letters P-E-R-R-A (bitch) into her thigh, the same word carved onto the many victims of her country's feminicide crisis. PERRA urgently asks spectators to defect in the wake of grotesque violence, to refuse easy understanding and instead occupy a position of shared vulnerability. A practice of defecting privileges an ethics of responsibility despite and because of the impossibility for accurate representation.