Circus meets visual Arts

During the Circus Year Gävle 2020, the municipality of Gävle organizes a number of circus activities. Gävle Art Center commissioned CirkusPerspektiv to create an exhibition and a program that examines the possibilities for a meeting between circus art and visual art.

Circus artists widely excel at the display of control over bodies, matter, elements, artifacts, and phenomenons that compose the circus event. The exhibition will present a body of circus works by Marie-Andrée Robitaille which challenges the notion of control in circus performance. Through a series of Bauhaus inspired methods and new-materialist theorizing, with different materials such as foil, fiberglass, and interactive technologies, the artist explores the potential of increasingly considering the non-human forces in her practice. What are the circus forms this approach may enable? What may unexpected arrangements in circus composition reveal? What can be learned from it? Can let go of control be a key to a new order?

The exhibition will reflect on, discuss and fantasize about the encounters and hidden opportunities that can emerge between people and the environment we are part of.

Artist + Curator: Marie-Andree Robitaille

Artists/collaborators: Hara Alonso, Rachel Wingfield

Partners: Gävle konstcentrum, Stockholms konstnärliga högskola SKH, Kristofferscenen, CirkusPerspektiv.

Pictures: Einar Kling Odencrants

More info: www.gavle.se/event/circus-meets-visual-arts/