When you enter the room it is dark. Only a few light spots, fluffy carpet and an amazing sound. One corner belongs to Nina Simone. She sings acapella, separated from her daughter’s friend, David Bowie, who responds to her with the same words of the same song from another corner.
It is almost like listening to your own family as we all know Simone and Bowie’s voices so well. They share something special with visitors. Two voices, one emotion. Love. But this duet never happened.
Be present and receive
The Oscar-winning filmmaker and artist Steve McQueen heard Wild is the Wind for the first time 30 years ago. The song was written by composer Dmitri Tiomkin and lyricist Ned Washington for the 1957 film of the same name. Later, it was taken to another register entirely by Nina Simone in 1966 and then a decade later, David Bowie paid tribute to her version. What McQueen appreciated the most in those two performances is the pure yearning – the want, the need, the must.
Knowing the lyrics are so important to the artist, visitors don’t need to be familiar with either the song, Simone, Bowie or McQueen at all to enjoy the exhibition, according to its curator, Lekha Hileman: “This is an exhibition that’s very experiential. It’s about feeling, it’s about being present,” she told Euronews Culture. “It’s about slowing down and just receiving something. So in that way, it’s very universal.”
As McQueen said, the viewer is the other voice in the work.
How David met Nina
Steve McQueen was inspired not only by the song, but by the way it had so many new lives thanks to the next generations of artists. He likes the story about how Bowie met Simone in 1975.
“[Nina Simone’s] daughter wanted to go to David Bowie’s concert, so she dragged her mother to take her, and they met afterwards. I think [that] Bowie version is almost homage to Nina. There’s a certain kind of imitation of her voice, but then it goes somewhere,” said McQueen.
The original version was a Johnny Mathis song, sang in 1957, which was nothing like Nina Simone’s.
“She took that song and took it to another stratosphere. So by putting these two versions together, it’s complimentary,” said McQueen. “They’re both singing A major. And it’s one of those things where I just felt that by putting those two things together, these two stones, it makes fire. And I know for sure they would be extraordinary, happy with this collaboration, with this duet.”
Tension and love
The title “66–76–26” refers to the years in which Simone and Bowie respectively recorded the song, as well as to the year of the exhibition at Guggenheim Bilbao itself.
Both recordings, in 1966 and 1976, came out in moments of political tension. The work invites reflection not only on the song’s enduring power but also on the social and political conditions through which these recordings have travelled.
Created during periods marked by upheaval, uncertainty, and transformation – the civil rights movement, Vietnam, Watergate – the performances speak with particular force to the present moment.
“Particularly now things seem very turbulent. And I think when things are very turbulent, the things that you hold on to are the things which are precious to you, which is love,” said McQueen. “And again, I know it sounds sort of corny, but it’s important because that’s the basis of us all in one way, shape, form or the other.
“That’s what we crave and that’s what we need. So to come back to some kind of understanding of love is important, at least for me,” explained McQueen.
Between work in cinema and the gallery
The plan of having Steve McQueen at Guggenheim Bilbao Museum began six years ago and the exhibition opened on the 9th of October, on his 57th birthday.
Perhaps best known for his work as a filmmaker, McQueen won an Oscar, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for his movie 12 Years a Slave. He also won several plaudits for Hunger including the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
But prior to those landmark works, McQueen made his name as a pioneering contemporary artist, who represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale and has had shows at the Tate museums in London among others.
In parallel with the exhibition, the Guggenheim Bilbao will present a film programme dedicated to McQueen’s cinematic work, offering audiences an opportunity to consider the relationship between his work in cinema and the gallery.
“66–76–26” highlights the concerns that have long animated his artistic practice: perception, embodiment, memory, duration, and the capacity of art to create spaces for reflection and encounter.
Steve McQueen’s sound installation “66-76-26” at Guggenheim Bilbao Museum is open until 13 February 2027.