The »beasts« come to life

The Brazilian artist Lygia Clark (1920-1988) always explored the possibilities of art: She initially devoted herself to painting and sculpture, producing monochrome paintings and creating her bichos (beasts) consisting of movable aluminum discs, of which around 70 exist. The bichos were to be reshaped by the public, whom Clark referred to as participants. This is made possible by replicas in the exhibition Lygia Clark: The I and the You at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. In addition, other Clark artworks from the late 1960s, which will be operated by groups, will be brought to life by performers. These performances can be experienced on October 8, November 20 and 23 and December 7. The exhibition runs from October 02, 2024, to January 12, 2025.

Clark played a central role in the neo-concrete avant-garde of the late 1950s. She lived in Paris from 1968 to 1977 to escape the military dictatorship in Brazil. For a time, she taught as a professor at the Sorbonne. In 1968, she represented Brazil at the Venice Biennale. Despite her work in Europe, her experimental oeuvre, which also explored the therapeutic effects of art, has only been more widely received outside Brazil since the late 1990s. One of her largest exhibitions was at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2014: Lygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art, 1948-1988.