The highly anticipated AIR Festival is set to return to Aspen, Colorado, from July 27 to 31, following a successful inaugural edition last year. This year's festival promises a vibrant array of performances, exhibitions, and discussions, all centered around the theme "Figures in a Landscape."
Among the featured artists is Adrián Villar Rojas, who will present a captivating two-floor exhibition at the Aspen Art Museum. He will also engage in discussions during the event. Notably, Matthew Barney will showcase sculptures linked to his previous performance, TACTICAL Parallax, displayed near the historic field house in Snowmass, a site with rich military history.
Returning to the festival, Lucy Raven will present an outdoor film-performance of her work Murderers Bar, accompanied by a newly commissioned score from Deantoni Parks. Camille Henrot will debut her performance piece Commedia dell'arte, blending traditional Italian theatrical elements within a contemporary New York City setting.
The festival will also feature diverse musical performances, including a collaboration by Los Thuthanaka, who fuse traditional Andean music with modern electronic sounds, and a piece by Kali Malone and Stephen O'Malley, inspired by the mystic Hildegard von Bingen, commissioned for the Holy See Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
Additional artists participating in talks and performances include Lyle Ashton Harris, Ivan Cheng, Morgan Bassichis, Nuar Alsadir, Kaveh Akbar, and Paige Lewis, with more names to be revealed. The festival will also host a keynote address by filmmaker Julie Dash.
Nicolas Lees, artistic director and CEO of the Aspen Art Museum, expressed the festival's mission, stating, "AIR embodies the ideal of a non-collecting institution, providing artists with the time, space, and resources to explore their ideas. This year's programming reflects the ongoing dialogue and inquiries that have emerged over the past year." He highlighted the influence of Villar Rojas's concurrent exhibition, which addresses the complexities of human intelligence in an intricate universe--a theme that resonates deeply within the artistic community.
