Miguel Benlloch: bodies that are trenches
In 1994, Miguel Benlloch began a long-term performance piece, I Have Time, where the artist performed the ritual of undressing in public. While the first actions were simpler, Benlloch would come to add to their complexity, as we see in 51 géneros (51 Genres). In this action, he removes his clothing as he shaves, puts make-up on, paints his nails and puts on various kinds of clothing associated to social roles, like a labourer’s coveralls or a business suit. In parallel, the artist’s voice-over reads fragments of the 2000 text “I Am Not A Lesbian!”, by American writer Terre Thaemlitz. The performative reflection seeks to blur appearances and the symbolic reach of social masks, exploring the mechanisms that construct conventions of sexual identity, binary gender and their hierarchisation. As Benlloch himself states at the beginning, “it proposes the radical presence of individuality in an other time of shared, non-regulated practices.”
MACBA Collection
The MACBA Collection focuses on the art of the period spanning the second half of the twentieth century to the present. Without ignoring the specificity of any moment, it centres on what the notion of artistic contemporaneity and its multiplicity of languages.
