Wael Shawky, I Am Hymns of the New Temples, Museo di Palazzo Grimani in Venice

The solo exhibition  I Am Hymns of the New Temples- أنا تراتیل المعابد الجدیدة of Egyptian artist Wael Shawky (Alexandria, 1971) at the Museo di Palazzo Grimani ('Ala Tribuna') in Venice, curated by Massimo Osanna (General Director of Italy’s National Museums), Andrea Viliani (Co-curator of the programme Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters) and Gabriel Zuchtriegel (General Director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii), is organised in collaboration between the Museo di Palazzo Grimani and the Archaeological Park of Pompeii.

The exhibition brings together the filmic work I Am Hymns of the New Temples- أنا تراتیل المعابد الجدیدة – realised by the artist in 2023 and which, after its premiere at the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, is presented in Venice as an international museum premiere – and a selection of multi-material works and drawings realised by the artist between 2022 and 2024. The exhibition project is conceived as an ideal dialogue between different spaces and times, in which contemporary artworks coexist with the archaeological works and the historical halls of Palazzo Grimani, outlining a path that prospectively leads from the Camaron d'Oro to the so-called Tribuna, also known as the Antiquarium or Camerino delle Antichità, the true fulcrum of the palace and its narration.

The four rooms in the Tribuna wing of Palazzo Grimani Museum have been restyled by the artist Wael Shawky (Alexandria, Egypt, 1971) as a story that evokes the co-existence of many different spaces and times, historical facts and mythical tales, and of creatures that are simultaneously animal, vegetable and mineral: real and ficticious. As in the time of Giovanni Grimani, patriarch of Aquileia – who, taking his uncle Cardinal Domenico Grimani, as his model – made their noble villa the stage on which Greek and Roman antiquity encountered the appeal of the Renaissance – Shawky has set up these rooms to become a time machine, connecting them to engage visitors in a journey through memory and fantasy.

Built up over the course of the 16th century, the collection of sculptures, marble reliefs, vases, bronzes and gems assembled by Patriarch Giovanni Grimani made the palace, and in particular the Tribuna, one of the most extraordinary testimonies to the relationship between classical antiquity and Renaissance and humanist culture, famous throughout Europe and already then the object of visits by scholars, princes and high prelates. After the Patriarch's donation to the Serenissima Republic and the transfer of the collection to the Marciana area in 1594, between 2019 and 2021 it will reunite with the rooms of the Palazzo.

The exhibition – which brings together the film I Am Hymns of the New Temples - and a selection of drawings and multi-material works in bronze, ceramics and glass – was conceived as a dialogue with the frescoes and decorations of the Palace, in which contemporary works stand side by side with the archaeological works of its collections, outlining a path that from Camaron d’Oro leads prospectively to the socalled Tribuna, also known as the Antiquarium or Camerino delle Antichità. This is the true fulcrum of the Palace and its historical and symbolic narratives, therefore lying ideally in line with Shawky’s films, as if the Grimani Tribuna and I Am Hymns of the New Temples could each be the mimesis of the other two versions of the same story. If the narrative in Palazzo Grimani articulates the theme of divine justice and the soul’s ascent towards the Christian God, in Shawky’s narrative, justice is affirmed in the succession of destructions and recreations, between the will of the divinities and the reactions of human beings in the ancient Mediterranean legends from which modern European civilisation originated.