A escala humana, is one of the most important solo exhibitions dedicated to La Ribot in her hometown of Madrid. Featuring both visual and choreographic work, the exhibition is curated by Olivier Kaeser.
Accompanied by the performers from La Ribot Ensemble, a core group of recent and long-standing collaborators, the choreographer presents six weeks of live shows in the Sala Alcalá 31 exhibition hall. It will be a unique opportunity to discover iconic performances from her repertoire, as well as a new piece, created for the exhibition.
The show opens with Laughing Hole (2006), a six-hour performance whose provocative cardboard signs and obsessive laughter have been shaking gallery walls around the world for more than fifteen years. LaBOLA (2022), a new work created for A escala humana will premiere on 1 March and be on view every day until the end on the exhibition. The piece depicts a world in constant mutation, in a swirling exchange of objects and clothing.
For the first time, the three installations Walk the Chair (2010), Walk the Bastards (2017) and Walk the Authors (2018 – ongoing) will be presented together. With the addition of some twenty new chairs, they now form a huge family of more than 90 pyrographed chairs. And like these chairs — “very used, having been sat on by thousands of people to watch movies in open-air cinemas, at weddings and baptisms, to look at other people, or to read” as the artist describes them — the exhibition is also populated with modest, worn and fragile objects and materials with which La Ribot has always had an affective relationship.
Although they were created over a span of almost twenty years, in the videos Despliegue (2001), Cuarto de Oro (2008) and ROJO (2020), La Ribot continues exploring her concept of “corps opérateur”: a single sequence shot with a handheld camera. Through this approach, the artist shows us fragmented worlds and attempts to convey the experience of dance. In Cuarto de Oro, for example, one can almost hear the heartbeat of the famous flamenco artist Cristina Hoyos, whose lively and reminiscent dance is captured in the video.
The composition of polaroid photos Otra Narcisa (2003) and the workbooks on display on the upper floor take us through more than thirty years of La Ribot’s work. The artist invites the spectators/visitors on a journey to the heart of her archives and her creative process.