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Artistic action by Cecilia Bengolea

October 18, 2022
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Participate in the event we are holding on October 25 on the occasion of the artistic action by Cecilia Bengolea for Museum Members. As part of the celebrations commemorating the 25th Anniversary, and to express our gratitude to Members for their support, the Museum is hosting a performative action by the artist Cecilia Bengolea in which around 450 Members can participate.

In this unique perfomance, titled Dance of the Mutating Materialities, the memory of the Museum, what it used to be and what it could become, is being projected through dance. The participants will be part of a collective dance to be held in the Museum’s Atrium, guided by the artist and a team of dancers. Once the performance is finished, the participants will be able to visit the Museum’s galleries to the beat of DJ Pappi’s music.

Cecilia Bengolea (Buenos Aires, 1979) is presenting a performance conceived specifically for the Museum’s most iconic space, the Atrium, that merges video installation and performance. Accompanied by four dancers and a DJ, the performance merges the rhythm of dancehall movements with a visual journey through archival videos that will bring back the memory of the construction of Frank Gehry’s building. Avatars will embody the materials shaping the Museum, as well as some of its artworks. Fog, alabaster, and titanium gain corporeality on a series of screens as the dancers and all the participating Members dance a collective choreography. Mixing video and dance, as well as scanning and rendering processes, the artist’s body in motion turns into fictional creatures and transforming materialities. A live device will enact this methodology during the performance, so that the collective body of participants will be reflected on the screens, thus also becoming material avatars.

As a visual and performative collage, the dancehall rythms and movements bring these different elements together, the Jamaican beat par excellence, with African and Caribbean roots, brings together these movements in a new visual landscape, activating new narratives. Dance of the Mutating Materialities is dancing the memory of a place, what it used to be, how it came into being, and imagining what it may become. Merging historical and imagined fragments, and recomposing institutional visual narratives shaken up by the impulse of dancehall, the collective performance erodes the divisions between bodies, materials, artworks, the museum, dance, and partyng.

Curated by Maite Borjabad López-Pastor
Dancers: Craig Black Eagle, Damion BG, Katrin WOW, Nika Mad Spirit
Music: DJ Pappi
Visual design: Sebastien Mizermont
Costume design: Marine Serre
Tech sponsor: LG OLED