Guintche

The performance act becomes a spectacle of transformism and pantomime in this work by the Cape Verdean artist Marlene Monteiro Freitas, one of the most distinctive and significant figures of the international performing arts scene. Inspired by the word guintche, which in her mother tongue can refer to a type of bird, a prostitute or an incoherent approach to doing things, Freitas embodies multiple creatures, in a succession of snapshots which see a boxer, a puppet, an acrobat, a clown materialize and alternate on stage. Swaying clumsily and contracting her face in a crescendo of grotesque expressions, the artist electrifies the stage with an extraordinary performance of sweat and muscular effort, in which the body becomes the battlefield for different creatures at war with each other.