Dora García. El Bicho

In 1929, the futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky wrote “The Bedbug” (published in Spanish as “La chinche”), a science-fiction story about a Soviet revolutionary who, in 1929, is accidentally frozen along with an insect that parasitises him. Fifty years later, in 1979, both the revolutionary and the insect come back to life.

Obsessed with this story, Dora García creates a work of performance art involving seven performers and the audience, imagining a collective author who asks what happens over a fifty-year period, who or what tells what has happened, and who decides which events have transformed the world over that time.

The piece (which varies in length depending on the space in which it is presented) imagines a story repeated cyclically, a kind of eternal return that, however, contains a flaw, a parasite, an insect, a bug, that prevents this repetition from unfolding without victims. Each presentation of the performance involves the audience in a different activity: sometimes it is a lecture, sometimes a workshop, or perhaps a dance class or a skating demonstration; and sometimes a play. Here, hierarchies are subverted: between performer and viewer, between those who speak and those who listen.

El Bicho (like the Corocuerpo, performance art piece, also included in the Grec programme) forms part of the Tàpies Museum project Extramurs, which conceives the city as a space for action and outreach. With a multidisciplinary and inclusive approach, it fosters dialogue between institutions, with public spaces and with the environment. Developed in collaboration with Barcelona’s EINA University School of Art and Design and the Barcelona Grec Festival, among others, the Extramurs project proposes creations and activities that address contemporary needs and encourage new community narratives in urban spaces. It champions the idea of public walls as bearers of city residents’ voices, places where collective narratives take shape and shared experiences are re-signified, connecting directly with Tàpies’ thinking.

Each annual edition of Extramurs moves from the Tàpies Museum into public spaces in collaboration with the Barcelona Grec Festival and other city institutions. The 2026 edition has invited the artist Dora García. Dora García works primarily in the visual arts and occasionally dance and theatre, as well as engaging with social and political contexts. Her work spans literature, film, installation and performance art, and focuses on stories she constructs and stages herself, creating situations designed to engage visitors and create unique, introspective experiences.

A production by the Tàpies Museum, the Gran Teatre del Liceu and the 2026 Barcelona Grec Festival.

Suitable for audiences of all ages.