PRESS PLAY: TANIA BRUGUERA

PRESS PLAY

Exhibition of videos of performances and films by artists who question the relationship between the performing body, architecture and the camera. Artistic projects based on the profound relationship between body-chamber or body-architecture, here focused on closed spaces. The choice will be made directly either from the BoCA archive, or via partnerships with other institutions. We have the partnership BoCA x Tate Modern, in which Catherine Wood (Senior Performance Curator at Tate Modern) selected 3 performances designed exclusively for the “BMW Tate Live: Performance Room” series (2011-2015), a series of performances transmitted to the alive and designed exclusively for cyberspace. BoCA x Serralves Foundation Collection will also present Portuguese artists. Every Thursday until at least 30 June 2020.

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WEEK 2

30 APR: Tania Bruguera, “Endgame” by Samuel Beckett (2017) / Arquivo BoCA, 22H www.youtube.com/bocabienal

Tania Bruguera (1968) is a Cuban artist who has been operating at the intersection of art and life, exploring the role that the artist and art can play in today’s society and in the political sphere. For more than 25 years, Bruguera has created socially active performances and installations that examine the nature of political power structures and their effect on the lives of the most vulnerable individuals and groups in society. Her research focuses on how art can be applied to everyday political life. His works expose the social effects of political forces and present global issues of power, migration, censorship and repression through participatory works that transform “spectators” into “citizens”. By creating aesthetic proposals and models for the use and adaptation of others, she defines herself as an initiator instead of an author, and collaborates regularly with various individuals and institutions (MoMA, Gugghenheim, Tate, Havana Biennial, etc.) so that the full the realization of his work occurs when others adopt and perpetuate it. Promoting the concept of useful art (literally, art as a benefit and a tool), Tania Bruguera proposes solutions to socio-political problems through the implementation of art and develops long-term projects that include a community center, a political party for immigrants and the school Art of Conduct. In 2017, commissioned by BoCA, the artist challenged herself to enter the territory of the theater, proposing to stage “Endgame” by Samuel Beckett, a text she read in 1998 and for which she designed a giant cylindrical structure, consisting of scaffolding, similar to a panoptic-shaped prison, that the public used to watch the show. Read here the article that Sara Castelo Branco wrote about the show “Endgame”