Performance on December 14, 5 pm
Museo National de Artes Visuales, Montevideo, Uruguay

Since 2014, artist Dani Umpi has been creating the series ‘Parangolés Rígidos’ based on concepts/works by Brazilian artist Hé́lio Oiticica, one of his greatest influences and references. Throughout various presentations of this evolving project, such as at the Casa de la Cultura Mario Quintana in Porto Alegre, Brazil (2014), MALBA in Buenos Aires (2014), the Museo de las Migraciones in Montevideo (2015), Galería Xippas in Paris (2015), Antipodes in Oslo (2016), Es Una Vidriera in Buenos Aires (2017), Galería Hache in Buenos Aires (2017), Bienal Sur / Feria Arco in Madrid (2017), and CCK in Buenos Aires (2018), among others, the research and experimentation grew in scenic dimension.

With large colorful paper mantles meticulously and obsessively made by Umpi, which serve as a cape during each act of performance, the original instructions of Oiticica to inhabit, wear, and dance with the piece continue. The primary characteristic of the work remains: a transformative, expressive-corporeal transmutation of the wearer, the materiality, and the audience. Originally conceived for samba-ing in the crowd, in this variant, the parangolé is almost apocryphally brought to the stage, “asleep,” with performers disappearing between its folds and a violinist improvising in front of this kind of sculptural dance of the “structure-action.”