On the eve of the opening of his exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao on October 8, Steve McQueen met with the museum guides who will introduce his work to visitors and school groups, so they could understand his intentions firsthand.
The project, titled 66 76 26 and on view through February 21, 2027, is a sound installation that brings together two of the great voices of the 20th century: Nina Simone and David Bowie. Stripped of all instrumentation, the two sing Wild Is the Wind a cappella, a song originally composed for the 1957 film Wild Is the Wind that has accompanied McQueen for more than three decades.
In a dark, bare room, only faintly lit by a few spotlights, Nina Simone begins to sing in her piercing voice, and David Bowie follows by echoing the same line, creating a kind of dialogue in which their voices gradually intertwine. When the roughly 11-minute loop comes to an end, the 57-year-old artist gathers the guides around him and invites their questions and comments.
He speaks about distance, air, rhythm and silence. About meditation. “It’s an invisible work, but it’s present,” he stresses, referring to the sculptural quality that sound acquires in the space. “It feels like a requiem to love: there is a yearning.”
Shortly afterward, the British artist and filmmaker, the only person ever to have won both the Turner Prize, Britain’s most prestigious contemporary art award, and an Oscar, sits down in an archive room at the Bilbao museum to discuss the piece and his broader body of work. His career spans video installations and moving-image works as well as feature films such as Shame (2011) and the acclaimed 12 Years a Slave (2013), which won three Academy Awards.
“Right now I’m working on a couple of movies and some artwork,” he reveals. “I’m working. I’m working all the time.”
McQueen is dressed head to toe in black, topped on this rainy day with a baseball cap, and wears clear-framed glasses. It is still early in the morning, and he asks for a coffee. He is not one to hide his feelings, and when a question rubs him the wrong way, his expression makes it clear.
“The idea is to take Nina’s 1966 recording and Bowie’s 1976 recording and bring them to the present day, to 2026,” he explains, revealing the meaning behind the title of the installation. “It’s a very emotional work, because both sing about love. But there’s a sadness in how they are communicating it.”
Of the many possible interpretations of the piece, McQueen steers attention toward that one. Two pop stars who became generational icons, “almost superhuman,” raising their voices to sing about desire and vulnerability, underscoring the idea that “love implies the possibility of being hurt.”
That emotional weight is heightened by the years that separate the musicians’ recordings from the present.
“We live in an environment when people talk about AI, when fear is discussed — because there is a lot of fear going around right now, with the rise of fascism in the West — and what is interesting is the idea of love,” he says. “I don’t mean to sound romantic or kitsch, but at the end of the day, it becomes fundamental. It’s the only thing worth living and dying for.”
The 1960s, when Nina Simone recorded her version of Wild Is the Wind, were also marked by social upheaval, channeled in the United States through the civil rights movement. Racism, colonialism, protest and resistance are some of McQueen’s central concerns, reflected in films such as his most recent feature, Blitz (2024), and the anthology Small Axe (2020), about Caribbean immigration in London, as well as in 66 76 26. The installation also evokes the “fluidity” of two singers who, he says, “when they were feminine, they were ultra-feminine, and when they were masculine, they were ultra-masculine.”
Other interpretations of the work might be drawn in relation to McQueen’s earlier projects, although he does not entirely agree with some of the parallels suggested to him. In his 2023 documentary Occupied City, for example, he juxtaposed contemporary images of Amsterdam’s streets and buildings with a narration recounting what took place in those same locations during the Nazi occupation — a clash that could draw some parallels with the contrast between Bowie’s and Simone’s voices. “You are a journalist, and you can think of those kinds of examples,” he replies, “but I think within the idea of the masculine and the feminine, of searching, of trying to communicate, Simone and Bowie were very similar.”
Born in the United Kingdom to parents from Grenada and Trinidad and Tobago, McQueen graduated with a degree in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London in 1993, at the same time the provocative, media-savvy generation known as the Young British Artists was emerging, with an approach to art very different from his own. “I’m a perfectionist; it’s not a crime: it’s what I learned at art school,” he says, referring to the classical elegance of his projects.
After his first phase as an artist, he presented his first feature film, Hunger, in 2008. “Art is like poetry, while film is like the novel,” he reflects on his double vocation. “Everyone has read a book, but not a lot of people know poetry. In that way, contemporary art becomes a little more exclusive, while filmmaking is more common just by nature.”
As a primarily audiovisual artist, it is surprising to come across a work by Steve McQueen that does not feature any images. There is some precedent, such as his 2024 installation Bass, which focused on light and color.
“It’s about taking away all the instrumentality, the music, to make something new. It’s like two stones making fire,” he says about his work at the Guggenheim. “What matters is the effect of the work. It’s not just the mechanics, but what it can do.”
Is he referring to the alchemy of creating an original from something preexisting? “This isn’t new; this is from [French artist Marcel] Duchamp; this is not of any interest,” he concludes, showing little interest in the debate over whether artificial intelligence will be able to take on creative tasks that have until now been considered uniquely human. “We are the ones who program the machines; we are behind them,” he says. “It’s almost like reinventing what’s already been invented.”
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