Exhibition “The most beautiful day” at the Museum of Fine Arts
- National Museum of Fine Arts, José Miguel de la Barra 650, Metro Bellas Artes.
- April 13 to July 7.
- Entry released.
The National Museum of Fine Arts presents the exhibition “The Most Beautiful Day”, giving an account of the legacy of Carlos Leppe, one of the greatest exponents of performance in Chile and Latin America, as well as one of the pioneers in the use of video art, installation and artistic practices conceived from sexual dissidence.
This is the Chilean artist’s first solo exhibition since his death in 2015 at the age of 63. It is organized by D21 Art Projects and financed by the National Fund for Cultural Development and the Arts (2023). It is curated by Amalia Cross and co-researched by Vania Montgomery.
The most beautiful day “is part of the exhibition policy of the first semester of the MNBA, which seeks to highlight the production of women and dissident artists who made performance and the use of the body their support and action as an act of resistance in the Chile of the 70s and 80s, also joining the currents of art in a world in crisis,” says Varinia Brodsky, MNBA director.
Through a selection of 10 performances, which are part of the Carlos Leppe Archive, recorded in video and photography between 1974 and 2000, we realize how the artist problematized and questioned various categories associated with the artistic, gender regulations with their moral and cultural prejudices, as well as the political system prevailing during the dictatorship in Chile.
In this way, covering 26 years of production, emblematic performances for the history of this discipline are addressed, such as his first body work with The Happening of the Hens (Carmen Waugh Gallery, 1974), where he simulated dying when laying an egg, surrounded by cast chickens, personal items and eggs; or the legendary performance Los Zapatos, which she performed at the opening of the exhibition Chile 100 Years of Visual Arts. Third Period (1973 – 2000) Transference and Density, curated by Justo Pastor Mellado.
“Our intention is to recover his figure to awaken the dormant forces of performance art in the new generations. The challenge is to reactivate these memories and archives by presenting Leppe’s body before us again or for the first time. That is why The Most Beautiful Day is not only the title of the bolero that accompanied her first bodily action, but also the day on which something unique and unforgettable like a performance happens, in front of our eyes,” explains the curator.
The curatorship focuses on two ideas: “Leppe’s sentimentality and the way in which these affections are transmitted over time through the body, recording and music,” adds curator Amalia Cross. While museography, led by Smiljan Radic, urges visitors to interact and experience the significance of using the body as a support. The exhibition also features video editing and design by María Fernanda Pizarro.
“Between the seventies and eighties, outer space stinged and cornered me, a situation that made me reach the imperative need for the body to reach almost the uncontrollable, to the delirium of bursting all order; “My body worked from the simulacrum, from the crisis of sexual identity, from the gesture, the rictus and even the primary text, from cross-dressing to the biography with its patches,” said Carlos Leppe in 1998 in the catalog of his exhibition Cegado. for gold*.
About the artist
Carlos Leppe was born on October 9, 1952. He entered the School of Art of the University of Chile in 1971, where he obtained a major in Painting. Since then he participated in avant-garde experimentation with video art and performance, seeking new expressions through which to question artistic institutions. This happened in “the early seventies, during the Popular Unity, when being homosexual and carrying out the revolution were simply incompatible due to the homophobia of the left-wing political parties,” says Amalia Cross. His mother was a fundamental support, participating in several of his performances.
During the dictatorship he was part of the so-called “Advanced Scene”, collaborating in the creation of works, exhibitions, publications and new spaces for art with other artists. From this period onwards, Nelly Richard’s critical writing was an inseparable part of the artist’s work.
“Since then, his work involved a strong questioning of the body: the social body, dissident bodies and, of course, his own body under the repression of the civil-military dictatorship. To do this, Leppe embodied different marginal figures and “transvestism techniques” in his works, using his body as a support,” notes Amalia Cross.