Stepping into Triple Threat, the new installation by Argentine artist duo Lolo y Lauti at the Mattress Factory, you might feel like you’re stumbling in late for a rehearsal you didn’t know was happening.
Lolo y Lauti’s Triple Threat at the Mattress Factory Takes Multimedia Art to New Levels
A ballet barre runs along the wall while a row of monitors shows three dancers already mid-routine. Their movements have the stylized flair of vintage television musicals: kicks held a beat too long, arms flung outward with theatrical precision, bodies pivoting sharply in formation. Their hair is sculpted into retro shapes, and they wear matching pale blue sweaters that give the scene the look of a variety show from a bygone era. One dancer performs much of the routine with a cigarette dangling from their mouth, pushing the choreography toward camp. The room begins to feel less like a gallery than the set of a long-lost television variety show.
The artists conceived the project after a visit to the museum’s main building at 500 Sampsonia Way. The details of one particular exhibition room caught their attention. Narrow and rectangular, the space reminded them of a dance studio. That shape became the foundation for the work. After the visit, Lolo y Lauti returned to Argentina to produce the video component, and in recent weeks they have been back at the Mattress Factory installing the piece on site, where dancers on the monitors occasionally reach for the ballet barre mounted on the gallery wall.
A Deeper Look
The title Triple Threat refers to a familiar phrase from musical theater: someone who sings, dances, and acts. But here the number three carries additional weight. The choreography was designed for three performers, the video unfolds across three monitors, and even the rhythm of the dancers’ movements suggests a triangular dynamic, bodies shifting between formation and separation.
For Lolo y Lauti, musical theater has long been more than entertainment. Growing up in Argentina, both artists encountered American musical theater through television broadcasts. Those performances became an unexpected lifeline. “It was beyond inspiring,” they recalled during a tour of the exhibition. In a cultural landscape where queer representation was scarce, televised variety shows offered glimpses of flamboyant, unapologetic performers. For the artists, those broadcasts suggested a world where queer expression could be uplifted.
The costuming in the video draws directly from that history. The dancers wear pale blue sweaters inspired by the wardrobe of the 1960s American musical variety show Hullabaloo. For Lolo y Lauti, the aesthetics of mid-century television and stage design represent a moment when queer performers could occupy public space with a kind of joyful excess.
Reality vs Intentionality
Yet the installation itself is spare. The room contains only the screens, the barre, and a mirrored wall. The artists describe their approach as deliberately stripped down. After 16 years working together, they have developed a practice that embraces minimal means. “We have learned to work with very little,” they said, “and that’s the way we like it.”
That restraint opens the work to interpretation. The video plays without sound, a choice that immediately changes the viewer’s experience. Without music, the choreography becomes strangely suspended. Visitors instinctively imagine a soundtrack—perhaps a Broadway number, perhaps something entirely different. The silence invites viewers to mentally complete the performance.
The mirrored wall offers another shift in perspective. Turn away from the screens and the work doubles back on itself. The dancers appear again in reflection, their movements unfolding in a reversed orientation.
Windows at the far end of the gallery add another layer. For nearly a decade, these windows had been covered, but when Lolo y Lauti returned to install the piece, they encountered natural light flooding the room for the first time. Rather than treat the windows as background, they folded them into the work. The artists often think about mirrors and windows as “activated rectangles”—moving images contained within frames, much like video screens.
More Than Just a Screen
The result is an installation built from a series of activated rectangles: monitors, mirrors, windows, and the elongated architecture of the room itself. Within that framework, the dancers’ bodies become instruments for exploring how movement inhabits space. Lolo y Lauti say they love collaborating with dancers precisely because of this awareness. The artists themselves are not dancers, a distance that may explain the fascination. Watching the performers move, they seem to study the choreography as much as present it.
Standing in the gallery, viewers may find themselves doing something unusual for a museum space—imagining movement. The dancers on screen hold the barre, pivot, and shift their weight in silence. Without music to anchor the scene, the choreography feels open-ended.
For Lolo y Lauti, this sense of blankness represents possibility. In this room, that possibility unfolds somewhere between rehearsal and performance, between television memory and present space. The stage is set. The music, if there is any, exists only in your mind.
Lolo y Lauti: Triple Threat is on view now at the Mattress Factory’s 500 Sampsonia Way building.
Story by Shawn Simmons
Photos Courtesy of Sean Carroll for the Mattress Factory
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