004.

“¿Por qué no son todos así, como yo debiera ser?” (Why aren’t they all like that, as I should be?)

2021

Solo exhibition at L21 Gallery

Palma de Mallorca, Spain

Text by Sofia Lemos



Full documentation and info

The opening sequence of Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia (1938) is recognized for its exacerbation of neoclassical beauty, strength and racial purity. Its closing scenes, however, depict a different embodied reality: athletes struggle with the vulnerability and exhaustion experienced at the finishing line, the unavoidable halting of speed wrought by their overextension, and the need to be held, covered and cared for.

Defeat and despair are the visible traces with which Riefenstahl ends one of the greatest political propaganda masterpieces of the twentieth century. The ending scenes of her filmic ode to the extravagant site of Third Reich political theatre that was the Berlin Olympics of 1936 is the departure point of Ian Waelder (b. 1993, Madrid) to explore the continuum of mourning and... [Read more]