Performance: Bar Tango by Benni Bosetto
Bar Tango is a new sculptural installation and performance by Benni Bosetto, comprising costumes, sculptures, and scenographic elements, accompanied by a sound composition. Curated by Almanac (Guido Santandrea, Filippo Berta) with Giulia Civardi, the new production explores the corporeality of love through notions of intoxication, hybridisation, and coexistence.
The apparent unity of our bodies is traversed by a multiplicity of presences and relationships. Some microorganisms are essential to our survival, while others can disrupt our equilibrium. Emotions and desires, too, inhabit us, invade us, and transform us. Love itself can be understood as a form of parasitism, a condition that intoxicates the body and alters our perception of reality. Biology and chemistry, as well as poetry and mysticism, offer different interpretations of these forms of interdependence, framing them as invasion, possession, or transformative union.
Conceived as an adaptable installation that intertwines sculpture, fashion, and scenography, as well as performative gestures that permeate the institutional space, Bar Tango unfolds as a constellation of objects and a surreal choreography. Tango dancers wear costumes that sculpt and transform their bodies, alongside accessories inspired by the animal, vegetal, and mineral worlds. At each venue Bar Tango tours to, the performance is developed in collaboration with local tango dancers, allowing the project to enter into dialogue with each city.
Originating in the Río de la Plata region, between Argentina and Uruguay, from the interweaving of European (particularly Italian), Creole, and African cultural traditions, tango becomes a performative language through which narratives of seduction and romantic love are enacted, where identities and relationships are structured around highly codified roles and persistent gender binaries.
Benni Bosetto evokes this imaginary in a manner that is both dreamlike and deeply corporeal, questioning social roles and destabilising conventions while foregrounding contamination, permeability, and transformation as fundamental conditions of existence.
The project will be presented at Almanac, Turin; Nottingham Contemporary; Triennale Milano, Milanl Haus der Kunst, Munich; and the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW, Basel, before entering the collection of MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna.
Booking is encouraged, but not essential. Performances last 2 hours but are drop-in - you are welcome to stay for as much or as little of the performance as you like.
Benni Bosetto (b. 1987, Merate, IT) lives and works in Milan. Recent solo exhibitions include Rebecca at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan (2026); Verde d’Alghe at Museo della Marineria, Pesaro (2024); Stultifera at MAMbo, Bologna (2022); Il Portico at Almanac, Turin (2020); and Ambiente X at Kunstraum, London (2019). Her work has been exhibited at numerous institutions, including Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin and Guarene (2026, 2023, 2020); Spazio Maiocchi, Milan (2026); KORA – Centro del Contemporaneo, Castrignano de’ Greci (2026); Madre, Naples (2025); MAMbo, Bologna (2025); Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2024); MAXXI L’Aquila (2022); GAMeC, Bergamo (2022); Galleria Civica, Trento (2021); Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome (2021); Quadriennale d’Arte, Rome (2020); and Villa Medici, Rome (2019).
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Access
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This event will be held in The Space.
This event is wheelchair accessible.
Some seating is available, and our team will be able to provide more seating on request. If you require a reserved seat for accessibility reasons, please get in touch with us via the contact details below so that we can ensure a seat is ready for you.
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