Si no bailas conmigo, no bailas conmigo

“If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution,” famously wrote the anarchist feminist Emma Goldman. Daniel Otero Torres’s vibrant sculptural ensemble Si tú no bailas conmigo, no bailas conmigo (If you don’t dance with me, you don’t dance with me) and Abrazos III (Hugs III) pays homage to Goldman’s provocative assertion by alluding to the conditions under which the revolutionary struggles for a better life are infused with expressions of joy, conviviality, and celebration. Otero Torres’s totemic, “dancing” sculptures proudly bear witness to the forgotten, anonymous, and overshadowed women fighters in liberation movements from the twentieth century to the present. Crafted from meticulous, hyper-realistic drawings transferred onto steel surfaces, these larger-than- life figures echo archival photographs from extensive research into historical records, books, newspapers, and online imagery. The photographs, edited and adjusted in scale and composition, capture various neocolonial conflicts, such as the Guatemalan Civil War, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, apartheid in South Africa, the struggles of rural communities to defend and sustain ancestral farming traditions, and the women’s movement.

Abrazos III (Hugs III) is composed of a whirlwind of hugging bodies, crowned by a sprawling galaxy in the shape of a flat, spinning disk with a central bulge surrounded by spiral arms. Held together in a tight embrace, their hands and clothing reference different cultural and ethnic groups.The colossal hug monument alizes the bonds of sisterhood and the enduring spirit of resistance, celebrating the force of unity and common values. Si tú no bailas conmigo, no bailas conmigo (If you don’t dance with me, you don’t dance with me) consists of stacked female figures and torsos, arms raised in a jubilant gesture, some holding a colorful knitted cord against a backdrop of black-and-white imagery. With yellow glass beads dangling from their sleeves, these figures embody the exuberance of collective joy.

Through his hybridizing aesthetic, Otero Torres constructs a cosmogony of visual references, weaving to get her diverse historical contexts and narratives. Reflecting on his work, he shares: “In my practice, I often address issues of history. It’s about social movements and political struggles imposed by the structures of colonialism in different countries. What I have been seeking to express has always been how to link and join different realities from different contexts of time and space and to bring them together.”

(Text written by TBA21 and used as wall label in the exhibition "The Ecologies of Peace", C3A, Córdoba, 2024)