Starting February 5, the twenty-four display cases in the Passage of the Bourse de Commerce feature works by filmmaker and sculptor Ali Cherri. In occupying the display cases, a classic museum device, and taking advantage of the Bourse de Commerce’s circularity, his work alludes to film and its twenty-four images per second, constituting ghostly flashes between reality and fiction, past and present.
The exhibition How I Am Monument looks at history through a material lens. Cherri’s recent mud-based sculptures take inspiration from archaeological artefacts and the natural world. Relics, sourced from auctions and antique markets, are grafted onto mud bodies to create hybrid beings. Cherri uses mud as both a material and a metaphor for creation. His video installation Of Men and Gods and Mud (2022) further explores mud’s creative power.
À l’occasion de l’acquisition de ces deux œuvres majeures, le [mac] propose à Ali Cherri de choisir dans les collections des Musées de Marseille des pièces résonnant avec son œuvre sculptée et vidéo, et de penser une scénographie comme un dialogue, où les objets sortent des discours encyclopédiques, pour être pleinement matière et susciter l’émotion, hors récits muséographiques traditionnels ou occidentaux. Les Totems sont des manières de raconter l’histoire par accumulation.
Once Within a Time takes its title from the most recent film by Godfrey Reggio, the legendary experimental filmmaker who has long resided in Santa Fe. Reggio’s Once Within a Time (2022) intertwines fairytale atmospheres with apocalyptic landscapes, pursuing a form of storytelling that blends the fantastical and the mundane in a moving portrait of the existential condition. Inspired by the film’s circular narratives, the 12th International places storytelling at its heart, exploring New Mexico’s multilayered histories through the lens of more than ninety participants.
