“A água é uma máquina do tempo”, a performance by Aline Motta

On Saturday, June 28, Hangar will host the performance A água é uma máquina do tempo (Water is a Time Machine) by Brazilian artist Aline Motta (Niterói, 1974). This multilayered project centres on the artist’s family and their lives in Rio de Janeiro at the turn of the 20th century, during a period of political unrest that followed the immediate aftermath of the abolition of slavery. The project includes personal documents belonging to the artist’s mother, such as her calendars and diaries from the 1970s, as well as a narrative about her death in 2011. This narrative serves as the central piece and structural backbone of the work.

Consisting of a fiction book, a video and a performance, the project explores the intersection between literature and the visual arts. Through the interplay of words and images, archives and fabulations, historical fragments and documents come together to recreate the lives of her ancestors, forming a fluid mosaic across eras.

Following its presentation at the 2023 São Paulo Biennial and its new installation format at the Museu Habitat exhibition, Fabular Paisajes (Fabulating Landscapes), at the Palau Victòria Eugènia, Hangar is now hosting a new performance, consisting of a curated reading from the artist’s eponymous book combined with video mapping projections.

Practical information
Date: Saturday, 28 June
Time: 7 pm
Location: Sala Ricson, Hangar
Free entry until full capacity is reached.

This event forms part of the Fabular Paisajes exhibition, which is part of the Museu Habitat project, and it’s curated by Manuel Borja-Villel, Lluís Alexandre Casanovas Blanco and Beatriz Martínez Hijazo. The exhibition will take place simultaneously at the Palau Victòria Eugènia and the Palau Moja in Barcelona from 27 June to 5 October 2025.