As part of Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa’s major site-specific installation, Linnæus in Tenebris, for the nave of CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, he will present a new performance work on 18 and 20 May. This performance is the fifth and final piece within the cycle of performances that Ramírez-Figueroa has been developing over the past two years alongside If I Can’t Dance and Corpus.

Linnæus in Tenebris is situated within the historic context of the eighteenth century, a time that still dominates much of Bordeaux’s architectural landscape. His work focuses on an emblematic figure of the Enlightenment, the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, who created a nomenclature that made it possible to classify most of the living species known at the time. In the installation the artist thrusts visitors into the cold and bleak atmosphere of a farm where strange hybrid species are grown on an industrial scale. He does this to tap into science fiction and biotechnology in order to address a recurrent theme in his work, namely, the suffering of the land and of the people who farm it.

The site-specific installation remains on view from 18 May to 24 September 2017, and will be complimented by the presentation of the videos of the four previous performances within the cycle. The exhibition Linnæus in Tenebris is curated by Alice Motard.

Linnæus in Tenebris is part of Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa’s cycle of performances that are commissioned and produced as part of Corpus, network for performance practice. Corpus is Bulegoa z/b (Bilbao), CAC (Vilnius), KW (Berlin), If I Can’t Dance (Amsterdam), Playground (STUK & M, Leuven), and Tate Modern (London). Corpus is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.