Andrea Peña «Bogotá»: A Performative Art Exhibition at Conde Duque Exploring Cultural Transformation

«Bogotá» is a performative work by Andrea Peña inspired by the city's political, historical, and cultural nuances, presented as a post-Andean baroque event. The piece contemplates death and resurrection through spiritual, corporal, social, and cultural transformations, set within a stark, brutalist design universe.

«Bogotá» is a new performative universe created by Andrea Peña & Artists (AP&A), deeply influenced by the Colombian heritage of artistic director Andrea Peña and presented as a post-Andean baroque event. With nine performers, the work contemplates death and resurrection, focusing on the constant spiritual, corporal, social, and cultural transformations inherent in Bogotá's landscape. Set within a dry, brutalist design, bodies and materials become political landscapes undergoing voluntary transformation and rupture. Through stages of rebirth and resurrection, the piece honors the resilience of people rising within the post-colonial era, blending ancient mythology, magical realism, and baroque architecture. The performance uses theatrical vivacity, described as gilded and grotesque, to queer death and question our posthuman capacity, consciousness, and resilience. It aims to offer a visceral, transgressive, and magnetic experience, celebrated as a chaos and resurrection to be savored. Andrea Peña describes the work as an invitation into a complex universe where collaborators bravely confront and experience inner transformations. In this post-colonial era, the work revisits history to engage with new futures, shifting cultural ideals and finding new ways to anchor within them. It serves as a reimagining of personal and ancestral pasts to create new futures, deforming time and space between the ancestral and the future to make sense of the current epoch. Peña, as a Colombian immigrant, brings her heritage to the forefront, embodied by non-Colombian artists who offer their humanity as an offering to resilience and emancipation within the post-colonial age. The piece explores spirituality, imagery, stories, and traditions as practices to invite new universes reflecting alternative, critical, and vulnerable versions of our own. Created by a diverse community of artists, «Bogotá» offers a space for healing and expression of Colombian ancestral forms, aiming to resurrect universal feelings that touch our capacity to be altered and changed forever. The piece features staging inspired by Colombia's political and spiritual heritage within a brutalist landscape, with nine performers narrating transformations between chaos and rebirth, embodying turbulent and evolving histories. It offers a physical and raw experience of mutation and resurrection, delving into inherited mythologies to consider how origins are embodied and mortality is expressed through cycles of existence and death. Movement is employed as a vehicle to tell stories, embarking on an esoteric journey through a magical realism-infused universe, revealing paths to transcendence and honoring the rebellion of deviant bodies and resilience in the post-colonial era.

Tickets are priced at 20 euros. The performance has a duration of 65 minutes and is suitable for a general audience. It contains scenes with full nudity and strobe lights. Booking is available via the provided link for the Conde Duque venue.