Abraham Cruzvillegas, Tate Modern Turbine Hall

Tate Modern Turbine Hall 2015
Abraham Cruzvillegas is the first artist commissioned by the latest Tate sponsor, Hyundai, to take on the mammoth task of filling the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern. Never an easy task with the enormous size and popularity of the Turbine Hall, Cruzvillegas also follows in the footsteps of some particularly fierce art giants, including Louise Bourgeois, Olafur Eliasson and Ai Weiwei. Favourites you might remember over the years include Anish Kapoor’s enormous deep red Marsyas structure in 2002 and the zig-zagging crack in Tate Modern’s floor in 2007 by Doris Salcedo.
Abraham Cruzvillegas Tate Modern
The actual installation at the Tate Turbine Hall remains a mystery until the opening date, but if it is anything like his previous work, it is certain to have a deep connection with the artist’s Mexican identity and his practice of creation and destruction.
Abraham Cruzvillegas biography
Cruzvillegas is a Mexican conceptual artist that invented the concepts of autoconstrucción and autodestrucción (translated literally as self-construction and self-destruction). For those unfamiliar with Mexico City, these two terms refer to the ingenuity of people constrained by poverty to build, destroy and fabricate using adapted, scavenged and recycled materials. In short, it’s a method for improvisation born out of necessity, seen in the poorer neighbourhoods of the sprawling city of 9 million inhabitants. For Cruzvillegas, this means assembled installations made of found and unusual objects, and non-representational self-portraits using elements that expand in space.
We can’t wait to see what this resourceful Mexican artist comes up with for the London Turbine Hall. Stay tuned to find out more as the Tate Galleries reveal Cruzvillegas’ grand design!