MASP

video room: Babette Mangolte

10.13-11.8.2020

Babette Mangolte (France, 1941) studied at the School of Cinema and Photography in Paris. In 1970 she moved to New York, the city where she currently lives and works. There she began a Project documenting in film and photography the local performance and choreographic scenes, including figures like Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Simone Forti, Trisha Brown, and other members of the Judson Dance Theater, as well as other artists such as Robert Whitman, Stuart Sherman, Robert Morris, and Joan Jonas.

From the mid-1970s on, Mangolte developed a cinematographic language based on the subjectivity of the camera, the central role of the viewer in the apparatus, and the relationship of the human body with space. In the 1980s, she continued this work and actively participated in the establishment and construction of an archive of performances in order to inscribe them within particular times and contexts. The selection of films that we presente in this exhibition focuses on her interest in dance and bodily movement, especially two projects on the work of Yvonne Rainer.

Other photographs and videos by Babette Mangolte can be seen in the exhibition Trisha Brown: Choreographing Life, installed on the first floor of MASP.

CURATED BY Maria Inês Rodríguez, adjunct curator of modern and contemporary art