Reference Lines | Líneas de Referencia

Performance; tattoo; artist’s body

Líneas de Referencia is a performance in which I have the Y-shaped incision used in a forensic autopsy permanently tattooed onto my body; the work, developed in El Salvador during a time of intense violence, views the body as a territory exposed to systems of control, classification, and violence, and by placing an incision usually made after death on a living person, the tattoo turns a forensic mark into a permanent drawing.

It was developed as a response to the years of violence in El Salvador, especially the way young people's bodies have been affected by gang violence, poverty, and the various systems of social control. As the political situation in the country has changed over time, so too has the meaning of the work, including due to the State of Exception that began in 2022. The work also links bodily violence to migration and borders: just as a forensic line is drawn across the body, political borders divide up living territories and decide who can move, who is kept within certain areas, and who is exposed to violence.

The piece Líneas de Referencia was first performed in 2008 and has since then been brought back and shown in various historical contexts; it most recently appeared in Donde Hubo Fuego, an exhibition curated by Simón Vega at the Museo de Arte de El Salvador (MARTE), and is set to be presented once more in winter 2026 at the National Museum of Anthropology of El Salvador, with the exhibition being curated by Elena Salamanca and supported by the Spanish Cultural Center in El Salvador and its international cooperation program.

Included in Kency Cornejo's book  Visual Disobedience: Art and Decoloniality in Central America, published by Duke University Press in 2024.