Candela Capitán

I develop my practice at the intersection of contemporary dance, expanded performance, and visual arts, as a critique of platform capitalism and a reflection on the image in the hyperconnected era. The body is my conceptual core, a territory where feminized corporealities are transformed in dialogue with technologies that materialize and modify them. From a feminist perspective, I investigate eroticization, confinement, self-exploitation, and internalized surveillance across social media and streaming platforms. My works —choreographic, installative, or audiovisual— unfold simultaneously in physical space and digital platforms, creating devices that restrict movement, question power relations, and project non-normative futures.

HOW DOES YOUR SUBMITTED WORK RESPOND TO THE CIRCA 20:25 MANIFESTO?
Content Cage responds to the REFUGIA manifesto by creating a space of confinement and survival, where a feminized body produces digital content under hypervisibility and internalized control. The piece understands refuge not as escape, but as an act of resistance activated within the oppressive structures of platform capitalism, stretching the limits between captivity and survival. The performer inhabits a sculptural cage—simultaneously isolated and exposed—mirroring the dynamics of digital environments. The work critiques an image that captures, surveils, and reproduces bodies for constant consumption. REFUGIA emerges as an interruption: a crack in the system from which to imagine other futures.

IF AWARDED THE £30,000 CIRCA PRIZE, WHAT 10-MINUTE WORK WOULD YOU CREATE – AND HOW WOULD IT EMBODY THE SPIRIT OF REFUGIA?
If I win the prize, I want to conceive a work that understands the CIRCA screen not as a destination, but as an opening toward an expanded dimension. The video, created for the Piccadilly Lights screen, will connect with a live action streamed and shared across networks, generating an unstable choreography that exceeds temporalities and spaces. For me, REFUGIA is not escape but a strategy to inhabit the device from within and fracture its logic of consumption. The project will be a habitable image: an interference that expands, circulates, and multiplies beyond the screen, transforming ways of seeing and inhabiting.

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Funding for the CIRCA PRIZE is generated entirely by the #CIRCAECONOMY, a circular model that reinvests proceeds from affordable art sold on CIRCA.ART into new public art commissions, charitable causes, art education and prizes. Since launching in 2020, the initiative has raised over £1 Million, placing artists and communities at the centre of an economy that continually reinvests in the future of art and culture.

The CIRCA PRIZE 2025 winners will be revealed LIVE in Piccadilly Circus on Monday 13 October, with a special 30-minute award ceremony starting at 20:00 BST. Don’t miss it!