The Reina Sofía Museum hosts the futuristic exhibition ‘Opera to a Black Venus’ in which the sea disappears

He Reina Sofia Museum presented this Tuesday the futuristic exhibition ‘Opera to a Black Venus’, by the Portuguese artist Grada Kilomba, who imagines an arid landscape where the sea has disappeared.

The artist, as reported by the Reina Sofía in a press release, considers that the ocean is the cemetery of millions of lives lost over the centuries, whether due to the slave trade, colonialism, war, climate change. or forced migrations. “What would the ocean floor tell us tomorrow if it emptied of water today?” Kilomba wonders.

The work ‘Opera to a Black Venus’ is a large-scale video installation, which stages the first part of a contemporary opera dedicated to a black Venus who lives at the bottom of the ocean and becomes the oracle of the narratives of memory and resilience.

Kilomba has worked with local artists from the outskirts of Lisbon, where he grew up: from sopranos, contraltos and tenors to percussionists and ballet dancers, all protagonists of this narrative. A choreography advances towards the viewer’s eyes, as if it were taking place underwater, with the sound of the winds, the voices and the improvised four-handed piano performance of the artist and her daughter, presented as a requiem or lament for those who have succumbed to the tides of the waters around the world.

In this way, the artist guides the public through other large installations with poetry and materials such as fabric, burned wood, stone, sand and glass as settings for this contemporary opera.

The exhibition is curated by art historian and former director of the Reina Sofía Museum, Manuel Borja-Villel, and can be seen from November 20, 2024 to March 31, 2025.

‘Opera to a Black Venus’ is the title of the new project that the artist has been developing over the last two years as a result of a collaboration between the Reina Sofía Museum and the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (Germany).