BMW Tate Live Exhibition 2020: Our Bodies, Our Archives. Faustin Linyekula, Okwui Okpokwasili and Tanya Lukin Linklater take over the Tanks at Tate Modern.

London. From March 20 to 29, the annual BMW Tate Live Exhibition, realised through the long-term partnership between Tate Modern and BMW, goes into its fourth edition. This year’s programme features Faustin Linyekula, Okwui Okpokwasili and Tanya Lukin Linklater, who will come together to create ten days of live performances and site-specific installations for Tate Modern’s atmospheric underground Tanks. The artists, who draw on their individual cultural heritages, each use the body in different ways to explore history, inheritance and storytelling.

About the Artists

Faustin Linyekula blends theatre, dance and music to articulate his experiences of social-political tensions in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Imagining the body as an archive he works with a circle of collaborators to physically express the traumatic legacies of colonialism and the upheaval of the DRC’s history since independence.

For this exhibition Linyekula will present ticketed performances of ‘My Body, My Archive’ (20 – 22 March), an intimate autobiographical performance combining carefully selected segments of his works ‘Sur les traces de Dinozord’ 2006, ‘Statue of Loss’ 2014, ‘Batanaba’ 2017 and ‘Congo’ 2019.

Throughout the exhibition visitors will also be able to see free, un-ticketed sound and film installations of Linyekula’s work as well as intermittent performance in the gallery.

Okwui Okpokwasili explores the collision of memory and the present in her durational performances, activating installations designed by her partner Peter Born. Brought up in the Bronx, New York, Okpokwasili’s intensely physical performances make visible the experiences of women of colour, sometimes drawing from her Nigerian roots.

During this exhibition Okpokwasili will stage three performances of ‘Poor People’s TV Room Solo’ (26 – 28 March) which examines the inter-generational relationships between black women.

Throughout the exhibition, visitors will also be able to take part in Okpokwasili’s un-ticketed work ‘Sitting on a Man’s Head’ which invites gallery visitors to observe and voluntarily participate in an improvisational public song and dance within an architectural installation created for the gallery. On the final day of the exhibition, Sunday 29 March, members of the public are invited to join Okpokwasili for a procession in the Turbine Hall.

Tanya Lukin Linklater uses performance, poetry and installations to call attention to Indigenous histories. Originating from two communities in the Kodiak archipelago of southwestern Alaska – the Native Villages of Afognak and Port Lions – Lukin Linklater draws on interactions with her extended family, Indigenous knowledge and Alutiiq and Cree experiences on the land to inform her work.

Devised for this exhibition, Lukin Linklater will debut a new work, ‘women : iskwewak’, drawing on these themes. This will comprise three ticketed performances (27 – 29 March) as well as free, open rehearsals for visitors to observe (26 – 28 March 2020) and an installation featuring Lukin Linklater’s films during gallery hours.

Each artist raises questions about shared memory, visibility and the relationship between material culture and immaterial tradition, challenging what these ideas mean within the context of a modern art museum. On the final day of the exhibition, Sunday 29 March, the three artists will take part in a panel discussion in which they will examine shared concerns around memory, history, inheritance and the cyclical nature of time.

BMW Tate Live Exhibition: Our Bodies, Our Archives will be the fourth edition of this experimental annual exhibition, following Anne Imhof’s sell-out performances last year as well as the success of the first two exhibitions 2017 and 2018. These groundbreaking programmes pioneered a new model for the exhibition format with an ever-changing series of installations and live performances across ten days. Taking place in the Tanks, the world’s first museum spaces dedicated to performance, film and installation, the BMW Tate Live Exhibitions have showcased a wide range of artists including Joan Jonas, Fujiko Nakaya, Isabel Lewis, Jason Moran, Min Tanaka, Jumana Emil Abboud, Wu Tsang and Fred Moten.

BMW Tate Live Exhibition 2020 is curated by Catherine Wood and Tamsin Hong and produced by Judith Bowdler.

Ticketed Programme

Friday 20 March
20.00–21.00, Faustin Linyekula: My Body, My Archive

Saturday 21 March
20.00–21.00, Faustin Linyekula: My Body, My Archive

Sunday 22 March
19.00–20.00, Faustin Linyekula: My Body, My Archive

Thursday 26 March
19.00–19.55, Okwui Okpokwasili: Poor People's TV Room Solo

Friday 27 March
19.00–19.55, Okwui Okpokwasili: Poor People's TV Room Solo
20.30–21.15, Tanya Lukin Linklater: women : iskwewak

Saturday 28 March
19.00–19.55, Okwui Okpokwasili: Poor People's TV Room Solo
20.30–21.15, Tanya Lukin Linklater: women : iskwewak

Sunday 29 March
11.00–13.00, Okwui Okpokwasili: Procession *un-ticketed, drop-in
14.30–16.00, Panel Discussion: Cycles of Inheritance
16.30–17.15, Tanya Lukin Linklater: women : iskwewak

For further questions please contact:

Doris Fleischer
BMW Group Corporate and Intergovernmental Affairs
Cultural Engagement
Telephone: +49 89 382 27806
Email: Doris.Fleischer@bmw.de

Prof. Dr Thomas Girst
BMW Group Corporate and Intergovernmental Affairs
Head of Cultural Engagement
Telephone: +49 89 382 247 53
Email: Thomas.Girst@bmwgroup.com

www.press.bmwgroup.com
Email: presse@bmw.de

Kitty Malton
Press & Communications Manager, Tate
Telephone: +44 20 7887 8730
Email: Kitty.Malton@tate.org.uk

About BMW Tate Live
BMW Tate Live is a major international partnership between BMW and Tate, which foregrounds the pivotal role of live experimentation in art history and today. The programme has now featured over 55 artists including both emerging and more familiar figures from across the world. It began in 2012 with the world’s first performance programme created for live online broadcast, and later evolved into an ongoing series of public performances in and around Tate Modern. As performance took on an ever-greater role in Tate Modern’s vision for the museum, the first annual BMW Tate Live Exhibition was opened in the Tanks in 2017.
Further information: https://tate.org.uk/bmwtatelive

About BMW Group Cultural Engagement
For almost 50 years now, the BMW Group has initiated and engaged in over 100 cultural cooperations worldwide. The company places the main focus of its long-term commitment on contemporary and modern art, classical music and jazz as well as architecture and design. In 1972, three large-scale paintings were created by the artist Gerhard Richter specifically for the foyer of the BMW Group’s Munich headquarters. Since then, artists such as Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Daniel Barenboim, Jonas Kaufmann and architect Zaha Hadid have co-operated with BMW. In 2016 and 2017, female artist Cao Fei from China and American John Baldessari created the next two vehicles for the BMW Art Car Collection. For years, the BMW Group and its partners have been initiating and establishing their own formats such as BMW Tate Live, BMW Welt Jazz Award, BMW Open Work, the BMW Art Journey and the "Opera for All" concerts in Berlin, Munich, Moscow and London. The company also partners with leading museums, art fairs and orchestras as well as jazz festivals and opera houses around the world. With BMW OPERA NEXT, the new partnership with the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, the opportunities presented by digitalisation are used to open up new ways of accessing the world of opera for young audiences. As part of its art programme “Muse”, Rolls-Royce partners for the initiative “The Dream Commission” with two internationally esteemed art institutions. Together with Fondation Beyeler and Serpentine Galleries, emerging and established artists are invited to submit a moving-image work that delivers an immersive sensory experience. The artists are nominated and chosen by renowned personalities of the art world like Daniel, Birnbaum, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Cao Fei, and Theodora Vischer. The BMW Group takes absolute creative freedom in all its cultural activities for granted – as this initiative is as essential for producing groundbreaking artistic work as it is for major innovations in a successful business.

Further information: www.bmwgroup.com/culture and www.bmwgroup.com/culture/overview
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