New exhibitions

Fiona Tan: Geography of Time
February 17–June 24
Curator: Ruth Direktor

The exhibition Geography of Time is chronologically situated between May You Live in Interesting Times (1997), Fiona Tan’s early autobiographical film, and Nellie (2013)—a portrait of Cornelia van Rijn, Rembrandt’s illegitimate daughter, who emigrated from Amsterdam to Indonesia at the age of 16. The story of Nellie seems like an inverted reflection of Tan’s own story: she was born in Pekan Baru, Indonesia (1966), and now lives and works in Amsterdam. In her works, Tan uses the photographed image to trace memory, present complex identities, and contemplate the ways we keep on reliving the past in the present. The video installations featured in the exhibition reflect her interest in the passage of time, the intricacies of biography, and the power of portraiture.

The works explore the relationships between the still image and the moving image and between image and sound, as well as their spatial and architectural dimensions. Tan’s art is characterized by visual richness and complexity, and examines themes of personal and collective history, identity and memory.

Geography of Time is Fiona Tan’s first solo exhibition in Israel. The exhibition was organized through a collaboration of four museums: the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo; MUDAM Luxembourg; MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. The participating museums have jointly published a comprehensive catalogue in conjunction with the exhibition.

Piranesi/Shiota: Prisons of the Imagination
December 15–May 6
Curator: Emanuela Calò

The exhibition Piranesi/Shiota: Prisons of the Imagination juxtaposes a series of prints Carcerid’Invenzione, c. 1761 by 18th century Italian G.B. Piranesi with the installation, Stairway, 2012/2016, by Japanese contemporary artist Chiharu Shiota. Both the works of Piranesi and Shiota are concerned with fragments, memories and vestiges of the past. Piranesi was born in Venice, lived in Rome and dreamt of resurrecting the city’s glorious past. Shiota, who was born in Japan and lives in Germany, sometimes dreams of returning to her birthplace.

Shiota uses yarn to weave together three-dimensional lines in space, and her work process calls to mind the etched lines in Piranesi’s prints, which are to a large extent, prisons of unfulfilled desires. The presence of a transcendental realm is palpable in both Piranesi and Shiota’s work. The image of a stairway appears in Piranesi’s series and in Shiota’s installation, and is a metaphor for a transition to another sphere; a path leading to the world of dreams or of the subconscious. The trajectory simultaneously ascends and descends, connecting between the past and future, and life and the afterlife. The stairs leading nowhere within the space of Shiota’s installation, as well as the repeating stairways in Piranesi’s prints are made up of architectural fragments, creating the impression of an endless, Sisyphean process.

Regarding Africa: Contemporary Art and Afro-Futurism
December 8–May 5
Curator: Ruth Direktor

Sub-Saharahn Africa is present in all its complexity and power in the art world and the artistic discourse of the past few decades. The comprehensive group exhibition reflects this dynamic presence: it features works that were made in or about Africa and focus on an Afro-futurist aspect as a way of deflecting Africa’s tortured past and appropriating the future through a black cultural lens.

The exhibition presents the vitality and effervescence that motivate Africa today, as well as the chaotic, brutal and at times tragic African reality. The works in the exhibition were created during the post-colonial period: the earliest date from the 1960s and 1970s (Africa’s “Decade of Independence”) and should be viewed as individual cases, as well as expressions of colonialism’s ramifications, through a redefinition of the African body, landscape and culture. Works created in Israel reflect the local  Little Africa—the growing local community of migrant workers and asylum seekers from Africa. They express various aspects of the Africa–Israel connection, and of the way Africa has assimilated into the Israeli imagination, fantasy and reality.

The different narratives manifested in the exhibition are reflected through utterances that shatter the conventional distinctions between truth and fiction, between myth and science, between technology and spiritualism. Often, the supernatural conception anchored in primeval myths appears in a futurist context, thus subverting hegemonic thought. In contrast, animism and science fiction coexist without conflict and in fact stem from the same sources.

Participating artists: Aboudia; David Adika; Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou; Abiel Amanuel& Alicia Mersy; Nurith Aviv; Frédéric Bruly Bouabré; Pieter Hugo; Bodys Isek Kingelez; Wanuri Kahiu; Luciana Kaplun; Ibrahim Mahama; Esther Mahlangu; Abu Bakarr Mansaray; Nandipha Mntambo; Zwelethu Mthethwa; Wangechi Mutu; New Barbizon—Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi, Olga Kundina,Anna Lukashevsky, Asya Lukin and Natalia Zourabova; Okhai Ojeikere; Adjani Okpu-Egbe; Onya Collective; Ariel Reichman; Adam Rotbard