María Evelia Marmolejo (born 1958) is a Colombian radical feminist performance artist, later based in Madrid and New York City.

She is credited by the Colombian scholar María Lovino with staging the first work of feminist performance art in Colombia, in 1981.

[4] Raised in a Catholic family with four brothers, from an early age she became displeased with the idea of machismo and her inferior role in a male-dominated society, which led her to express this frustration in future artworks such as "Tendidos".

She found performance art suitable for her as it gave her an outlet to express her anger and distress towards her country's political turmoil at the time, as well as her own struggles with being a woman.

Here, she created her first installation for her final exam in 1979 titled "Tendidos",[5] where she hung both used and unused pads from a clothing rack, which was hanging from a butchers hook.

Her first performance titled "Anonimo 1" (Anonymous 1) took place in 1981 at the Plazoleta del Centro Administrativo Municipal in Cali, Colombia.

In the second part, Marmolejo cured her self-inflicted lesions and then continued to walk over the paper with bandaged feet until the twenty minutes that she had planned for the performance were up.

[10][11]"Anonimo 1" also marked the beginning of her often utilizing self-harm as a technique to express herself in her performances and easily capture the attention of her audiences.

Marmolejo arranged paper on the floor in an L shape and walked naked over it so that her blood would drip on it, all while playing flushing sounds in the background.

[14] This performance was a way for her to express a part of her that had always been looked down upon by society, as well as a way to free herself and finally accept the natural functions of her body.

[19] Through the performance, Marmolejo expressed her belief that they should not be celebrating, but instead lamenting that day because the discovery of the Americas also marked the beginning of colonialism.

She used some of the most tragic and graphic descriptions of conquest that de la Casas had described in his book as an attempt to convince people of the horrors of colonialism.

She then proceeded to cutting her own fingers and using her blood to write the word "América" on the Christopher Columbus statue located in the plaza.