La Mà Que Es Retreu / Mientras Me Miras is a site-specific research and performance project that investigates the subtle forms of racialisation and exclusion that permeate everyday life in public space.
Building on research developed by Mayssa Fattouh in ‘Silent Waves Underground’, the project combines urban observation, movement, performative reading and sound intervention to explore how the smallest gestures—a hand that recoils, a glance that avoids, a body that alters its path—construct seemingly insignificant but deeply structural forms of violent coexistence.
Taking as its starting point an experimental performance staged in 2025 at the exit of a metro station, the project has been developed jointly by Mayssa Fattouh and the choreographer Kotomi Nishiwaki. The proposal transforms this research into a site-specific performative experience where research, choreography and sound intervention dialogue and intertwine, inviting the audience to rethink the relationship between the body, the city and shared public space.
Beca Barcelona Crea – La Visiva 2026, with the suport of Institut de Cultura – Ajuntament de Barcelona
Biography
KOTOMI NISHIWAKI
Kotomi Nishiwaki (Japan) is a performer, dancer, choreographer and actress. She began her dance training in Zurich and continued it at P.A.R.T.S. (Performing Arts Research and Training Studios) in Brussels. Parallel to this, she has trained in butoh with various masters. She has worked as an independent performer and dancer with Anzu Furukawa, João Fiadeiro, Abraham Hurtado, Francisco Camacho, Meg Stuart / Damaged Goods, Aina Alegre, Ondine Cloez, among others.
As an actress, she has appeared in the HBO series Foodie Love, directed by Isabel Coixet, and in the film Upon Entry, among other productions.
Since 2017, together with Miquel Casaponsa, she has been running the artistic association Park Keito, based in Barcelona. From this space, they develop research into movement, sound and the visual performing arts, promoting collaboration between artists from diverse disciplines to create live performances, concerts and installations presented in various contexts and spaces.
MAYSSA FATTOUH
Born in Beirut and based in Barcelona, she holds a degree in Fine Arts and has studied Philosophy. She is the co-founder of Mardakoosh – which explores food, memory and identity – of TandemWorks, dedicated to art in public spaces, and of Pristine Folds, which focuses on improvised music.
She is currently an artist and curator-in-residence at EART Barcelona. Fattouh's multidisciplinary practice is primarily situated within collaboration, where exchange becomes a tool to question the dynamics of everyday comfort and convenience in a context of systemic collapse. Through research, music and fieldwork, she seeks to open collective spaces that foster solidarity and diversity.
She has collaborated with institutions and spaces such as Jiser (Barcelona), Espai Souvenir (Barcelona), L'Automatica (Barcelona), Zumzeig (Barcelona), Casa Árabe Madrid, the Boghossian Foundation (Brussels), HKW (Berlin), the Mathaf Museum (Doha), the Beirut Art Centre, the Sursock Museum (Beirut), the Ab-Anbar Gallery (London) and the Tamayo Museum (Mexico City), among others.
