Niñas Furia

Niñas Furia is a collective of female-identifying multidisciplinary artists and scholars, advocating for women’s rights in Guatemala through education and community-building initiatives centered around art production and exhibitions. Niñas Furia promotes the education of historically under-represented female artists while also advocating for gender equality and women’s rights, often alongside other organizations and groups. In all of their initiatives, Niñas Furia centers art as an essential tool for self-expression, social transformation, the denunciation of injustice, and as a defense of women’s life in their respective contexts.

With the legacy of the Guatemalan Civil War, a 36 year period of internal armed conflict from 1960 to 1996, gender-based discrimination, marginalization, violence, and even femicide has been normalized in the region. These factors coupled with the nation’s conservative public education curriculum has triggered a pattern of systemic exclusion of women’s work in the Guatemalan art-history academic cannon. In response to this underrepresentation of women in scholarly and artistic spaces, Niñas Furia hosts regular community events, arts workshops, stages exhibitions, and publishes books to educate Guatemalans about the legacy of women artists, both historical and contemporary.

The collective also collaborates with other local organizations to bring peace, support, and representation to the women in the region affected by discrimination and gender-based violence. Many of Niñas Furia’s workshops and programs involve girls, as youth-outreach and arts-education serves an essential aspect of the collective’s mission to end gender-based injustice at every stage of life. Recently, in early 2024, Niñas Furia released their first book, “Niñas Furia: Mujeres artistas en Guatemala” (Niñas Furia: Women artists in Guatemala), an art history publication and crucial educational resource on women’s contributions to the arts in Guatemala.