Ahead of opening her first exhibition in the UK, Modern Art Oxford presented ‘an action’ by the Guatemalan performance artist Regina José Galindo at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art.

I was among the 40 people invited to attend this performance. “Come to Ruskin at 3pm” the invitation had said, which is why I found myself standing in the Ruskin lobby, on a cold winter’s day, dressed in several layers of warm winter clothing, waiting to discover just what the performance would involve.

We were herded to the lower floor and divided into packs of ten, all waiting patiently for the performance to begin.

The first group was ushered through the door and five minutes passed silently, each of us avoiding eye contact.

Then the door opened, and we (the second ten) shuffled into a small white room, which was so warm, I began to think I had returned to Australia, where the temperature there at the moment is more than 40 degrees. The door shut. We stood there looking at each other.

Then the first person removed a scarf, and then a jacket, another remove a beanie hat, and another went as far as taking off both jacket and jumper – such was the heat of the room.

Suddenly we began talking, laughing, and communicating. We were sharing an experience and that experience was affecting us all. As was Regina José Galindo’s aim – we thawed. We talked, we changed and were no longer impassive.

By raising the temperature in the space we occupied, the typical British reserve had been diluted, because we were experiencing an environment which encouraged us to communicate.

The event was filmed by a camera fixed to the wall close to the emergency exit. Once edited, it will be on show as a video in the entrance area of Modern Art Oxford and, therefore, added to the many videos that this remarkable artist has on show in The Body of Others, which continues at Modern Art Oxford until March 29.

The videos on show include Silence and Defence, in which the artist hangs from an arch reading poems to the wind, and also the most famous of all her performances, Who Can Erase the Traces?

The later shows the artist dipping her feet in a bowl of human blood and leaving a trail of footprints which commemorate the victims of Guatemala’s armed conflict.

The footsteps are also a protest against the presidential candidacy of ex-military leader Efrain Rios Montt, leader of a coup d’état and responsible for genocide. This is a thought-provoking exhibition which should not be ignored.