The Argentine multidisciplinary artist Cecilia Bengolea, whose practice explores the body – in both its individual and collective dimensions – as a site of memory, empathy and emotional exchange, presents a selection of four of her video works at the Cinema Iride in Lugano.

Bombom’s Dream is one of the most surreal moments in The Infinite Mix, an off-site exhibition project by the Hayward Gallery in London, created in collaboration with The Vinyl Factory. This ensemble piece follows the extraordinary adventures of the Japanese dancer Bombom, travelling to Jamaica to take part in a local dancehall competition. A children’s book illustrator in her daily life, Bombom seems to experience a dimension in Jamaica suspended between reality and imagination.
Lightning Dance explores the influence of atmospheric electrical phenomena on the imagination of the body. The video features Craig Black Eagle and Oshane Overload-Skankaz alongside their respective groups, who, in the artist’s presence, perform solos and group choreographies under torrential rain. At the centre of the scene, the dancers’ movements evoke Jamaican dancehall, a highly sensualised style that Cecilia Bengolea interprets as a bearer of almost magical and healing energies. The roar of the storm becomes the true rhythmic foundation upon which the choreography is built: dissolving the boundaries between nature and the human body, Lightning Dance draws the viewer in until movement and light are transformed into a genuine life force.
Return to Bog Walk presents the first footage shot in Jamaica, marking the starting point of a video project destined to develop further in the United States. Filmed in Bog Walk and its surroundings, the footage documents the first choreographic encounters and embodied exchanges, rooted in dancehall culture and the local landscapes. These initial sequences form the foundational material of the project, defining a visual and emotional terrain from which the images created in the United States will take shape and expand.
Spin and Break Free. I 600 fili draws inspiration from the rotational and mechanical movements of the machinery historically used for spinning flax and hemp, interweaving the memory of textile labour with the Free Dances of the 1930s. Spontaneity-mechanicality, repetition-liberation, improvisation-constraint, alienation-rebellion: these are pairs of opposites that permeate every visual and auditory element of the film.