Visual arts review: This youiiyou celebrates relationship between adults and infant children

Tino Sehgal, This youiiyou, Millenium Hall, Cork City Hall, Cork Midsummer Festival

Artist Tino Sehgal’s 'This Youiiyou' was part of Cork Midsummer Festival

★★★★☆

El Greco (1541-1614) painted The Adoration of the Shepherds in the last year of his life, intending that it be hung over his tomb in the convent of Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo. The Adoration of the Shepherds is distinguished by El Greco’s signature habit of elongating his figures; the animated nature of the scene, which includes a company of angels hovering over the Holy Family; and his dramatic use of darkness and light.

The Berlin-based contemporary artist Tino Sehgal has taken The Adoration of the Shepherds as inspiration for his show – or what he prefers to call a ‘constructed situation’ - at Cork City Hall as part of Cork Midsummer Festival. Sehgal’s performers – or ‘interpreters’ - typically use voice, language and movement to tease out his ideas. 

And so it is with This youiiyou. Just as The Adoration of the Shepherds illuminates the relationship between the infant Jesus and his admirers, so do the performers at City Hall celebrate the relationship between adults and infant children.

As one enters the space, a young man chants wordlessly, albeit tunefully, as he ambles about the floor. Soon he is joined by another young man, a young woman and her infant son. They sit on the floor and the adults continue chanting together, much to the infant’s amusement. When they raise their arms in the air, he does so too. Another young woman arrives with her baby in her arms, and the chanting continues.

One could argue that it is a performance in which nothing much happens, but the audience seem enthralled. People leave, and more arrive, and sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between participant and spectator, and that no doubt is part of Sehgal’s intention.

This youiiyou was first performed in the presence of El Greco’s masterpiece at the Fundación Botin in Santander, Spain, where it now hangs, in 2023. It would, of course, have been too monumental an undertaking to borrow the painting for the performance in Cork, but still, one is left to wonder, what if?