ANNE IMHOF SEX
TATE MODERN, LONDON
A performance commission and exhibition situated within an assemblage of 12ft crowd control barriers, platforms, paintings, stainless steel urinals, ephemera and sound systems. The commission is both an exhibition by day and a series of six live performances by night.
Titled Sex, the work deals with fluidity between binaries – female and male, top and bottom, night and day – and the blurred line where two opposing zones meet. Structural interventions splice through each of the grand spaces. In the South Tank, visitors walk into space on a raised platform, a scenario mirrored in the East Tank where the hierarchy of viewing is reversed and visitors are situated on the ground beneath a pier. The adjacent Transformer galleries display a collection of Imhof’s Gradient and Scratch paintings, alongside elements of sculpture that intervene in the architecture.
During six evenings at Tate Modern, the performers inhabit the space while interacting with each other and engaging with situations and objects that serve as settings for their characters. Power dynamics between performer and viewer are also a key component of the work. Viewing positions alternate between high and low, shifting perspectives on the live tableaux. Performers also occupy an inaccessible zone behind a glass partition in the East Tank, onto which they paint. Music specially composed together with Billy Bultheel and Eliza Douglas for the unique acoustics of the subterranean galleries bleeds through each space.
Senior Art Technician- Rose Moya