Guadalupe García-Vásquez initiated herself into the arts when living in Brazil in her early twenties. Her chosen disciplines were painting and photography, although it was the ritualistic performances of Macumba, the Afro-Brazilian religions, and more specifically that of Candomblé, that inspired G. García-Vásquez to leave her unfulfilled life as the wife of a North American businessman, whom she eloped with at 16, and to dedicate her life to the arts.

In 1972, during the New Year celebrations, G. García-Vásquez entered the sea off Ipanema beach, removed her wedding band and offered it to Yemayá – a Water goddess, patron spirit of women and mother of all the other Orishas – and to the Virgin of Guadalupe, in exchange for guidance throughout her divorce and her life. This ‘ritual performance’, as she calls her performative works, symbolised the beginning of a career in the arts and Santería, an African diasporic religion developed in Cuba that syncretises the traditional Yoruba religion from West Africa, Catholicism and Spiritism.

After abandoning her husband and being forced to leave her children with him, G. García-Vásquez returned to Mexico City in 1976. In 1978 she had the opportunity to be one of the first people to see the recently discovered Coyolxāuhqui Stone, depicting the Aztec goddess Cōātlīcue’s rebel daughter, whom the artist reveres as “representative of her Indigenous ancestry, feminist consciousness, and often-troubled relationship with her family.” (McCutcheon 2023, 119) In 1983, G. García-Vásquez enrolled at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico, where she began her formal studies in Visual Arts.

G. García-Vásquez is the daughter of Afro-Mexican poet Juan García Jiménez, and her work sits within conceptual art and feminism, exploring the artist’s Indigenous and Black roots. In the 1980s, she became one of the few Mexican visual artists to acknowledge and celebrate the ‘tercera raíz’ [third root] as part of Mexico’s racial heritage. Her art practice is multidisciplinary although performance allows her to combine Afro-Mexicanism, aesthetics, love, life and spirituality in a compelling way. The artist continuously circles back to the ritual performances she witnessed in Brazil, decolonial systems for the archiving and safeguarding of ancestral knowledge, which she considers as means for transformation and healing.

In 1984, alongside artists Nunik Sauret (1951–), Roselle Faure (dates?), Rose van Lengen (1940–) and Laïta Dubois (1952–), G. García-Vásquez formed the art collective Bio-Arte, a visceral creative position that took the female body, her womb, the feminist gaze and spirituality as the means for their art practice.

In 1986, soon after the worst earthquake in the history of Mexico City, G. García-Vásquez relocated to San Francisco in the United States. The influence of Women’s Liberation Movements in America in the 1980s, and her frequent returns to Mexico to participate in art and cultural events where traditional dances and music, along with oral story-telling and public rituals, were at the centre, helped G. García-Vásquez further explore the role of women such as la Malinche, Cōātlīcue, Coyolxāuhqui, the Virgin of Guadalupe, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), amongst others, in the formation of Mexican identity.

Her interests in Afro-Mexican rituals and performances led G. García-Vásquez to embark on a PhD programme at New York University in the 1990s, focusing on the traditional performances of Black people from Costa Chica, in Guerrero State, Mexico. At around the same time, she was also initiated as a santera [Santería priestess] by babalao [high priest] Armando Sánchez. Since then, art and life have fused in G. García-Vásquez’s practice; her performative body has become the vehicle “to bring about moments of healing, not only for herself but for her ancestors, too.”(McCutcheon 2023, 122)

G. García-Vásquez has performed in numerous countries including Brazil, Mexico, the USA, Cuba, Czechia and Netherlands, and has collaborated with other performance artists such as Guillermo Gómez-Peña (1955–) and René Yáñez (1942–2018). In addition, she has received numerous awards and accolades including the John Rockefeller Foundation Grant in 1992. In 2024 G. García-Vásquez lives and works in New York.