Tate Modern reveals artists for 2020 BMW Tate Live Exhibition

20 – 29 March 2020
In partnership with BMW
For public information call +44(0)20 7887 8888, visit tate.org.uk or follow @Tate #TateLive

Tate Modern announced the three artists taking part in this year’s BMW Tate Live Exhibition: Faustin Linyekula, Okwui Okpokwasili and Tanya Lukin Linklater. These artists, who each use the body in different ways to explore history, inheritance and storytelling, will create ten days of live performances and site-specific installations for Tate Modern’s underground Tanks. Opening on 20 March 2020, this will be the fourth annual BMW Tate Live Exhibition, part of the museum’s innovative performance programme in partnership with BMW.

Faustin Linyekula (b.1974) blends theatre, dance and music to articulate his experiences of social-political tensions in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Imagining the body as an archive he works with a circle of collaborators to physically express the traumatic legacies of colonialism and the upheaval of the DRC’s history since independence.

Okwui Okpokwasili (b.1972) explores the collision of memory and the present in her durational performances, activating installations designed by her partner Peter Born. Brought up in the Bronx, New York, Okpokwasili’s intensely physical performances make visible the experiences of women of colour, sometimes drawing from her Nigerian roots.

Tanya Lukin Linklater (b.1976) uses performance, poetry and installations to call attention to Indigenous histories. Originating from two communities in the Kodiak archipelago of southwestern Alaska – the Native Villages of Afognak and Port Lions – Lukin Linklater draws on interactions with her extended family, Indigenous knowledge and Alutiiq and Cree experiences on the land to inform her work.

Each artist raises questions about shared memory, visibility and the relationship between material culture and immaterial tradition, challenging what these ideas mean within the context of a modern art museum. This ten-day exhibition will involve ticketed evening performances as well as free installations to explore during gallery hours. It will be accompanied by a programme of live events and collaborative workshops.

BMW Tate Live Exhibition 2020 will be the fourth edition of this experimental annual exhibition, following Anne Imhof’s sell-out performances in 2019. Taking place in the Tanks, the world’s first museum spaces dedicated to performance, film and installation, the BMW Tate Live Exhibitions have showcased a wide range of artists including Joan Jonas, Fujiko Nakaya, Isabel Lewis, Jason Moran, Min Tanaka, Jumana Emil Abboud, Wu Tsang and Fred Moten. This is part of Tate’s wider commitment to exhibiting, collecting and researching live performance art. Last year Tate announced a new fund to enable the staging of live works from the national collection and has since presented performances by Rose Finn-Kelcey, Tony Conrad and Allora and Calzadilla across Tate’s galleries.

BMW Tate Live Exhibition 2020 is curated by Catherine Wood and Tamsin Hong and produced by Judith Bowdler.

ABOUT BMW TATE LIVE
BMW Tate Live is a major international partnership between BMW and Tate, which foregrounds the pivotal role of live experimentation in art history and today. The programme has now featured over 55 artists including both emerging and more familiar figures from across the world. It began in 2012 with the world’s first performance programme created for live online broadcast, and later evolved into an ongoing series of public performances in and around Tate Modern. As performance took on an ever-greater role in Tate Modern’s vision for the museum, the first annual BMW Tate Live Exhibition was opened in the Tanks in 2017. For further information, please visit tate.org.uk/bmwtatelive

ABOUT BMW’S CULTURAL COMMITMENT
For almost 50 years now, the BMW Group has initiated and engaged in over 100 cultural cooperations worldwide. The company places the main focus of its long-term commitment on contemporary and modern art, classical music and jazz as well as architecture and design. In 1972, three large-scale paintings were created by the artist Gerhard Richter specifically for the foyer of the BMW Group’s Munich headquarters. Since then, artists such as Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Daniel Barenboim, Jonas Kaufmann and architect Zaha Hadid have co-operated with BMW. In 2016 and 2017, female artist Cao Fei from China and American John Baldessari created the next two vehicles for the BMW Art Car Collection. Besides co-initiatives, such as BMW Tate Live, the BMW Art Journey and the “Opera for All” concerts in Berlin, Munich, Moscow and London, the company also partners with leading museums and art fairs as well as orchestras and opera houses around the world. The BMW Group champions absolute creative freedom in all its cultural activities – as this initiative is as essential for producing groundbreaking artistic work as it is for major innovations in a successful business.