Gloria Godínez. Decolonial red in the painting of Vincent Van Gogh

This performance by Gloria Godínez is also a sound action that exposes the origin of the grana cochineal in pre-colonial Mexico and its transfer to the Canary Islands. The migratory route – which the artist shares with the insect – is narrated in Spanish and Zapotec, with testimonies she has collected from the current protagonists of its cultivation. This makes the material history of the red visible: millions of people cultivating the insect, the dye preparation and the commercial routes through the centuries. In dialogue with Van Gogh's work at the Museum, the Dutchman's painting constitutes an exceptional case in its time due to the enormous number of pieces in which she used maroon in juxtaposition to its complementary, green; there is no decolonial twist in his work, red does not exalt the colonial idea of luxury and power that it had in the painting of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.