Exhibition 'Gestures as Portals by Amparo González Sola' in Marres, House for Contemporary Culture
'Gestures as Portals' is a research and ongoing performance that expands the questions of the project 'While Taking Shape' by choreographer and dancer Amparo González Sola.
The month-long performance takes place during the dismantling of the exhibition 'Vultures & Fireflies' by Mexican artist Alejandro Galván. Visitors encounter the performers in a house where remnants of the exhibition remain visible, alongside traces of its deconstruction and empty spaces.
Gestures are central to González Sola’s practice. She approaches them as portals to memory and connectors between bodies, shaped by context, inherited through generations, and always relational. During her time at Marres, she works with the gestures found in the rooms: those of the performers, the visitors, the workers, and traces from the former exhibition 'Vultures & Fireflies'. These gestures are echoed, held, stretched in the space, repeated, reversed, reshaped: building a vocabulary of movement that slowly accumulates meaning.
The performance emerges from a growing sense of detachment in a world where terrible events are constantly projected onto our retinas through the media—an endless stream of images moving at high speed and stripped of context, seemingly freezing our ability to feel. How close does something need to happen before we feel a connection or a sense of responsibility? By focusing on small gestures, González Sola invites us to reconsider the dynamics of gaze, distance, and proximity as we reflect on what it means to bear witness.
With 'Gestures as Portals', Amparo González Sola continues to explore the questions and choreographic methods she investigated in While Taking Shape, her dance performance that premiered in 2025 at the SPRING Performing Arts Festival. For Marres, she will develop an ongoing performance that unfolds over four weeks, inviting visitors to stay for as long as they wish. The work evolves daily, allowing both the choreographic material and the space itself to gradually transform through repetition, presence, and interaction.
