Ligia Lewis. study now steady

The live exhibition “study now steady” presents recent works by Berlin-based artist and choreographer Ligia Lewis (b. 1983 Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic), bringing insights into her practice as a key figure in redefining performance in museum and art galleries. Blending the formats of performance, durational live installation and video, three of Lewis’s major works invite us to confront a confluence of processes that disrupt normative conception of the body. At the same time, her work interrogates the traces of family history, memory, and the unknown, often marked by physical and emotional intensities by which comedy and tragedy collide.

For Lewis, choreography is the movement of ideas across bodies meticulously conceived, crafted, and directed, it is a political act and a writing against the grain of the racial regime of representationalism and (black) erasure. The works in the exhibition are informed by one and another, deader than dead (2022) invites visitors to enter a physical and mental space that expands on meaning­lessness and limits alongside the dancers, a quest to the notion of “dead-pan”. The durational live installation study now steady (2023) stages enactment of dancers in choreo­gra­phic patterns: exercises in repetition and endurance telling stories of racism, vio­lence, and resistance. The film installation A Plot / A Scandal (2023) engages the themes of “scandal” and resistance on the island of Hispaniola, and the Greater Antilles in the Caribbean Sea, through the story of her grandmother Lolón Zapata. Lewis explores such pleasures and their cost weaving together a series of historical events, political laws, and mythical narratives.

This exhibition continues Haus der Kunst's programme of exploration into liveness in contemporary practices, connecting to the solo presentation of Pan Daijing and the various formats experimented at our annual exhibition ECHOES.

Ligia Lewis’s performance deader than dead will open International DANCE Festival München at 7.30 pm on 22 & 23.5.25. The installation study now steady will have its European Premiere on 24.5.25 at 4 pm and is live following the schedule: 24 – 31.5.25 from 4 – 7 pm, except 25.5.25 from 2 – 5 pm. The full schedule can be found in the calendar.

As part of the exhibition and the International DANCE Festival München, further presentations will take place at Haus der Kunst. The performance of Jefta van Dinther and the presentation of the AKADEMIE students during our monthly Open Haus on 30.5.25 are core to our vision of engaging practitioners from visual arts, dance, and music across generations. We are proud to present these programmes in support of younger generations and in close collaboration with our partner: DANCE, and coming next “ars viva” exhibition in June and “nora chipaumire” project with SPIELART Theaterfestival in November.

“Ligia Lewis. study now steady” is presented by Haus der Kunst in cooperation with International DANCE Festival München.

Curated by Xue Tan and Marlene Mützel

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