Benni Bosetto
Bar Tango30 October 2026
Bar Tango is a new sculptural installation and performance by Benni Bosetto, comprising costumes, sculptures, and scenographic elements, accompanied by a sound composition. Curated by Almanac (Guido Santandrea, Filippo Berta) with Giulia Civardi, the new production explores the corporeality of love through notions of intoxication, hybridisation, and coexistence.
The project will be presented at Almanac in Turin, Nottingham Contemporary in Nottingham, Triennale Milano in Milan, Haus der Kunst in Munich, and the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW in Basel, before entering the collection of MAMbo - Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna of the Settore Musei Civici of the Comune di Bologna.
The apparent unity of our bodies is traversed by a multiplicity of presences and relationships. Some microorganisms are essential to our survival, while others can disrupt our equilibrium. Emotions and desires, too, inhabit us, invade us, and transform us. Love itself can be understood as a form of parasitism, a condition that intoxicates the body and alters our perception of reality. Biology and chemistry, as well as poetry and mysticism, offer different interpretations of these forms of interdependence, framing them as invasion, possession, or transformative union.
Conceived as an adaptable installation that intertwines sculpture, fashion, and schenography, as well as performative gestures that permeate the institutional space, Bar Tango unfolds as a constellation of objects and a surreal choreography. Tango dancers wear costumes that sculpt and transform their bodies, alongside accessories inspired by the animal, vegetal, and mineral worlds. At each institution, the performance is developed in collaboration with local tango dancers, allowing the project to enter into dialogue with each city.
Originating in the Río de la Plata region, between Argentina and Uruguay, from the interweaving of European—particularly Italian—Creole, and African cultural traditions, tango becomes a performative language through which narratives of seduction and romantic love are enacted, where identities and relationships are structured around highly codified roles and persistent gender binaries.
Bosetto evokes this imaginary in a manner that is both dreamlike and deeply corporeal, questioning social roles and destabilising conventions while foregrounding contamination, permeability, and transformation as fundamental conditions of existence.
Presentations:
ALMANAC, Turin, IT
Performance: 30 September 2026
Club Almagro, Via Perugia 20
Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, UK
Performance: 13–15 November 2026
Exhibition: 16 November 2026 – 10 January 2027
Triennale Milano, Milan, IT
Performance: 25 March 2027
Haus der Kunst, Munich, DE
Performance: 28 May 2027
der TANK, Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW, Basel, CH
Exhibition: 4–20 June 2027
Performance: 19-20 June
Bar Tango is a project by Benni Bosetto, curated by Almanac (Guido Santandrea, Filippo Berta) with Giulia Civardi.
Costume production by Alessia Fregonese. Sound interludes: text and music by Benni Bosetto, sound production by Vito Gatto.
Bar Tango is produced by Almanac in partnership with Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW, Nottingham Contemporary, Haus der Kunst Munich, Triennale Milano, and MAMbo - Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, of the Settore Musei Civici of the Comune di Bologna.
Bar Tango is made possible with the support of the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture, as part of the Italian Council programme (14th edition, 2025), aimed at promoting Italian contemporary art internationally.
Almanac is supported by Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo and Fondazione CRT.
Benni Bosetto (b. 1987, Merate, IT) lives and works in Milan. Recent solo exhibitions include Rebecca at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan (2026); Verde d’Alghe at Museo della Marineria, Pesaro (2024); Stultifera at MAMbo, Bologna (2022); Il Portico at Almanac, Turin (2020); and Ambiente X at Kunstraum, London (2019). Her work has been exhibited at numerous institutions, including Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin and Guarene (2026, 2023, 2020); Spazio Maiocchi, Milan (2026); KORA – Centro del Contemporaneo, Castrignano de’ Greci (2026); Madre, Naples (2025); MAMbo, Bologna (2025); Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2024); MAXXI L’Aquila (2022); GAMeC, Bergamo (2022); Galleria Civica, Trento (2021); Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome (2021); Quadriennale d’Arte, Rome (2020); and Villa Medici, Rome (2019).