Wu tsang
By Charlotte Stace
Conceived by the American filmmaker, artist and performer Wu Tsang, La gran mentira de la muerte (The big lie of death) is a multichannel sound and film installation made especially as a site-specific work for MACBA’s Capella.
Lasting 40 minutes, it explores French composer George Bizet’s opera Carmen. Tsang was particularly interested in engaging with it as Carmen’s myth is entangled with the performative fields of flamenco and bullfighting. Like the opera, these themes evoke the spectacle of death and implicate the spectator as a part of it.
Different sub-themes run through Carmen: colonialism, issues of race, gender stereotypes, class and criminality. All of which serve to make Carmen an image of western otherness and, at the same time, she embodies one of its great stereotypes. Furthermore, the collision of these themes displaces her character, and sets in motion the tragic destiny of the myth.