Coco Guzman
May 1st to May 31st, 2014

Coco Guzman’s immersive installation The Demonstration explores the interpersonal dynamics of the crowd and the intense emotional narratives generated when a large group of people come together for a common purpose. Originally composed by 13 large sculptures, Coco has chosen to create a specific on-site installation for Whippersnapper Gallery and the Mayworks Festival. The female Minotaur, the main sculpture of The Demonstration, is setting herself free guided by a playful kite. This freedom is not always easy and it comes with risks and pain, either from within ourselves, people around us or from society. The Minotaur inhabits this struggle and this desire of growing freer.

Historian Eric Hobsbawm writes that, “Next to sex, the activity combining bodily experience and intense emotion to the highest degree is the participation in a mass demonstration”. The audience is invited to wander within the scene of this grotesque demonstration/parade composed by human-size papier-mache figures and on-site drawings and to reflect on the place that protest/celebration and gathering takes in our neoliberal societies.

The Minotaur sculpture has been created in collaboration with visual artist Carla Molina-Holmes.