Glenda León
Glenda León’s solo show at AZKUNA ZENTROA – ALHÓNDIGA BILBAO
EAzkuna Zentroa – Alhóndiga Bilbao presents the works of the artist Glenda León (Havana, 1976, resident in Madrid since 2011) at the exhibition entitled "A tree falls in the forest".
As such, the exhibition showcases the “sensitive conceptualism” that defines the work of an artist for whom listening is not merely a physical act, but rather a form of consciousness. That is why her creations convert sound and silence into tools for perceiving what is invisible, what is spiritual, and what is political.
“If a tree falls in the forest where there is no one to hear it”, the philosophical dilemma regarding the relationship between reality and perception that gives the exhibition its title, reflects this sensory experience. Faced with a world crammed with both external and internal noise but unable to listen, Glenda León proposes silence as an active space. It is a challenge that invites us to reconnect with our body and our surroundings, turning the tree that fell without anyone hearing into a metaphor for contemporary society and its individuals. With this premise, the project becomes an advocate for renewed listening, enabling us to make sense of what unfolds, casting a light on what remains concealed, and transforming perception into a form of knowledge.
The exhibition is conceived as a carefully-structured journey that tours a series of interconnected thematic spaces. Through them, Glenda León questions both the identity that is commonly ascribed to us in advance and the way we understand and inhabit the world.
Sometimes politics and society are the starting-point, with works such as Political World, Playing Field, or Summer Dream, which explore the tensions in contemporary life. These works address ideological polarization, the levers of power, censorship, the paradoxes of progress, and conflicts present in both what is collective and what is intimate.
Furthermore, a series of dualities, which Glenda León never seeks to resolve dogmatically, resonate powerfully throughout this exhibition. Hers is always a subtle discourse, one that interrogates the spiritual and the practical, the sound of reality, and the visualization of appearances. Butterfly Effect, About the Invisible, or Contours of the World are works that question the boundaries between what we see and what we think we see.
All these elements taken together converge into a nuclear work, Interpreted World (for Piano), where the names of the gods, written in Braille, act as musical scores played on the piano. Once again we find the visible and the invisible, the audible and the inaudible, building a new image and a new sound.
The tour is completed with works such as Celestial Bodies, Travelling Light, or Mirage, which serve as a synthesis of all that precedes them and lead us gradually to Conversio, the last piece and one of the artist’s most recent works. This performance/installation condenses many of the themes that have been developed before, and manages to construct a reflection system capable of generating a dialogue between different cultures, circumstances, and ways of seeing the modern world.
An elegant sense of humour, a light touch of irony, and a certain erudition free of any pretention, are not lacking throughout this entire universe. The works of Glenda León offer equal measures of sense and beauty, wisdom and intuition, concept and sensuality, creating a mysterious atmosphere where optimism can co-exist with an intense sensory experience.
Although A Tree Falls in the Forest is the first solo exhibition by Glenda León in Bilbao, it is not the first time that her works have been exhibited at Azkuna Zentroa. In 2019 she formed part of Never Real / Always True, a collective on the symbiosis between art and literature, through the perspectives of 13 artists.
Conversio is a performance that invites reflection on the universal dimension of spirituality, transcending religious differences and upholding those elements that unite humanity.
When activated, five performers dressed in robes representative of the most widely practiced religions perform a synchronized choreography to a tune by DJ and producer Richie Hawtin, a seminal figure in the global electronic music scene. As the movements progressively unfold, clothing is slowly removed and synchronisation becomes the vehicle for a state of ecstasy and transcendence of the ego.
