Cie La Ribot

A dancer by training, choreographer and visual artist, Maria Ribot has contributed to the development of contemporary dance in Spain since the mid-80s. In 1991, under the name of La Ribot, the Madrid artist took her work along new paths by creating scenic works at the moving intersection of live art, performance and video. Humour and eccentricity are the distinctive features of her work, which covers a broad artistic field and questions the economic aspects of performance, the marketing of art in terms of the artist or the present time. Ribot exposes and challenges her own observations, the starting point being the body, space, the image and movement. Living in London between 1997 and 2004, she basically gave solo performances, endowing her ”distinguished project” with a unique breadth which was to lead to her being nominated for the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for plastic arts in 1998. Her short-format pieces, from 30’ to 7 mins in the three "distinguished series", or long - from 4 hours to 8 hours in Laughing Hole – place greater emphasis on the playful side and on incongruous associations. Uncommon use of words, objects, bodies, recourse to nudity, extreme sobriety or shimmering of colours all form part of this conceptual work. In the works of Ribot, the body is exposed as in 40 espontaneos, both as chosen subject and as living matter. Since moving to Geneva in 2004, she has taught at HEAD (Haute Ecole (College) of Art and Design and continues her exploration of different mediums. As her travels have acquired an international flavour, La Ribot has opened up her work to other forms of artistic encounters, within the very essence of her works. One example would be Gustavia, a show created in 2008 with the French choreographer Mathilde Monnier as cosignatory, or a video piece with the dancer Cristina Hoyos for In_ter_va_lo, a cycle of contemporary art and flamenco. © Carole Parodi