Soliloquio

“My name is Tiziano Cruz, I am from a town called San Francisco that belongs to the Valle Grande department of the province of Jujuy, in the North of Argentina. I was born and grew up on the border between Chile and Bolivia; nine indigenous communities have passed through the lands where I spent my childhood: the Atacama, the Kollas, the Guarani, the Tobas, the Ocloyas, the Omaguacas, the Tilianes and the Toaras. From this place, I think this piece which I have called Soliloquio (I woke up and hit my head against the wall).”

Soliloquio is a tribute to erased indigenous cultures, performed together by Tiziano Cruz and the Andean communities of Brussels, shouted under the open sky, on the streets that lead to the theatre, to then push its doors wide open. By forging links and building bridges with local groups, the artist attempts, through dance, to reconnect with a culture that has been brutally fractured by colonialism, to reactivate a lost collective memory.

Drawing on childhood memories and on 58 letters Cruz wrote to his mother during the pandemic, Soliloquio deploys dense poetics and poignant imagery, exposing how the lower classes have been increasingly marginalized while indigenous bodies in a white­-dominated capitalist system have been made invisible. Tiziano Cruz enters the previously unreachable field of contemporary theatre with a manifesto for the recognition of differences, a scathing critique of those in power who perpetuate discrimination, exclusion and injustice, including the art world. As generous as it is urgent, Soliloquio is an invitation to build the future instead of simply waiting for it.

• Tiziano Cruz (Jujuy, Argentina) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work brings together visual and theatrical language, performance and artistic intervention in public space. Tiziano has been a grantee of the Fondo Nacional de las Artes and the Instituto Nacional del Teatro ARG. He was the winner of the Bienal de Arte Joven 2019 and winner of the ANTI award, Finland, 2023. He founded Cultural Management Platform ULMUS, dedicated to the mediation between different cultural organizations in Argentina and neighbouring countries. His works have toured Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Finland and the USA.