Marina Abramović is one of the artists taking part of “Il Ritratto dell’Artista” a group exhibition opening on the 23rd of Fenruary at Museo Civico San Domenico in Forlì. Narcissus’ reflection was the first self-portrait. Over the centuries, artists have used self-portraits to explore identity, emotion, and artistic mastery. The mirror reflects not just a face but a mask more character than person. Artists often place themselves within larger narratives from mythology to history. Their image becomes a symbol a signature a timeless trace like Narcissus’ reflection echoing through art literature and psychoanalysis.
On Saturday, February 22, and Sunday, February 23, after the great success of the exhibition Between Breath and Fire, Seven Deaths, Marina Abramović’s cinematic installation, returns for one final opportunity. Screenings will take place at 10:00, 11:30, 13:00, 14:30, 16:00, 17:30, and 19:00, with free admission by reservation until seats are full. Tickets are valid only for the booked time slot, and we recommend arriving at least 15 minutes before the screening starts.
On February 20th MOCA presents the U.S. première of Wael Shawky’s film installation “Drama 1882”. Debuted at the Egyptian Pavilion of the 2024 Venice Biennale, this work makes the form of an eight-part opera, performed for the camera and filmed in a theater in Alexandria. “Drama 1882” takes the Urabi revolution in Egypt against British imperialism (1879-1882) as its foundation, specifically a cafe brawl between a donkey owner and a Maltese man that unleashed events that precipitated over seventy years of British colonial rule in Egypt.
South African artist William Kentridge returns to campus with his latest creation for the stage, a chamber opera set on a 1941 sea voyage from Marseille to Martinique. Conceived in collaboration with theater maker Phala Ookeditse Phala and choral conductor and dancer Nhlanhla Mahlangu, The Great Yes, The Great Nofictionalizes the historic wartime escape from Vichy France by, among others, the surrealist André Breton, the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, and the Cuban artist Wifredo Lam—and adds a distinguished and colorful cast of characters to the passenger list, like Aimé Césaire, Josephine Baker, Leon Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin.
Directed by William Kentridge, with design and puppet-mastery by Handspring Puppet Company, this irreverent encounter with the "Faustian Pact" remains a powerful metaphor for our times. With music by Warrick Sony and the late and much revered James Phillips underscoring William Kentridge’s glorious animations.
Cape Town, South Africa
The Baxter Theatre, Main Rd, Rondebosch, Cape Town, 7700, Sudafrica
Wael Shawky’s work “I Am Hymns of the New Temples” is part of the 16th Sharjah Art Biennale, from 6 February to 15 June 2025. The Biennial theme, to carry, entails understanding our precarity within spaces that are not our own while staying responsive to these sites through the cultures that we hold. It also signifies a bridge between multiple temporalities of embodied pasts and imagined futures, encompassing intergenerational stories and various modes of inheritance. What do we carry when it is time to travel, flee or move on? What are the passages that we form as we migrate between territories and across time? What do we carry when we remain? What do we carry when we survive?
