MAINZ.- The exhibition Bodies in Motion – Form in the Making sets performance-based video works by internationally renowned artist Cinthia Marcelle (b. 1974 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil)—one is produced jointly with Tiago Mata Machado (b. 1973 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil)—in context with 1960s/1970s post-minimalist dance and performance works from figures such as Yvonne Rainer (b. 1934 in San Francisco, US), Bruce Nauman (b. 1941 in Fort Wayne), and Suzanne Harris (1940–1979, US) as well as the unique minimalist sculptures by Charlotte Posenenske (1930–1985, Frankfurt am Main), whose form is repeatedly renegotiated and redefined in participatory exercises.


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Cinthia Marcelle’s oeuvre is a logical evolvement of the socio-political art produced in twentieth-century Brazil, where material experimentation was combined with conceptional and formal rigour and implemented in a manner that was uniquely participatory. An interest in the relationship between material, form, time and space lies at the heart of Marcelle’s practice, expressed in multi-media works that link a decidedly processual and performative methodology with a sculptural approach.

Cinthia Marcelle has been working on performance-based video works since the early 2000s. They all take the same basic formal structure: a staged sequence of actions is presented from a fixed camera position, performed by a group of amateur actors who work in the same profession. The participants follow simple instructions from the artist that are based on their everyday work routines, but clearly differ significantly in terms of their customary functional logic.

In the 1960s, a young generation of choreographers in the US turned their backs on the modern dance that was typical of the era, with its illusionistic character and formal stylistic techniques. Instead, they incorporated everyday movements and poses into dance practice, as well as sequences of actions that were intrinsic to industrial working routines. They created improvisations with these movements or structured them through playful exercises and patterns. The aim of integrating elements from everyday life was, on the one hand, to aspire to a more accessible and more equitable form of artistic creation and, on the other hand, to focus on those activities in their everyday context as well as the conditions in which they exist, thereby triggering a change in how viewers regarded their own activities and the society in which they lived. Given that Cinthia Marcelle’s video works, many of them produced jointly with Tiago Mata Machado, also liberate everyday routine movements and working processes from their function- and production-oriented context, it seems a logical step to consider her approach against a background of 1960s dance and performance practice. What Marcelle shares with the avant-garde artists who practiced post-modern dance and performance is their improvisationally choreographed everyday sequences of movements and collaborative, participatory situations that present entrenched routines in terms of social interaction and a modern performative logic.

At Kunsthalle Mainz, the video works are presented adjacent to each other and sequentially in a timed, rhythmic choreography, thereby emphasizing the chronological aspects of processes and the performative nature of each show.

Bodies in Motion – Form in the Making is curated by Anna Roberta Goetz.

Artists: Cinthia Marcelle & Tiago Mata Machado, Suzanne Harris, Bruce Nauman, Charlotte Posenenske, Yvonne Rainer



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