July programme
In 2022, we continue to advance and develop new exhibitions through a programme that has interdisciplinarity, diversity and openness at its core, focusing on questions and concerns that are central to our world, to our societies.
Maja Hoffmann
Since 2004, our programme has been looking across different disciplines, encompassing multiple perspectives and cultures. It reflects the richness of culture that the world produces as well as the tensions and conflicts that it generates. Located in Arles and the Mediterranean, building on my family’s heritage on the notions of nature and culture reinvented over the years, LUMA Arles is becoming a place where unique experiences and outlooks on the current state of the world are shared.
Hans Ulrich Obrist Archives, Chapitre 2: Etel Adnan
The Tower, Level -2 Rez-de-jardin, Cherry Tree Gallery
From July 2, 2022
From July 1, 2022, one of the world’s best-known female practitioners, Etel Adnan, who recently passed away, will be the focus of the presentation of Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Archive. The presentation will showcase the multifaceted practice of Adnan’s and the many layers of her work, from poetry to visual arts, drawing and painting and will reveal to proximity and in-depth relationship of two major international cultural figures, that of Adnan’s and Obrist’s.
James Barnor: Stories. Pictures from the Archive (1947-1987)
The Tower, Level -2 Rez-de-jardin, Living Archive Gallery
From July 2, 2022
The exhibition James Barnor, Stories. Pictures from the Archive (1947–1987), which will be presented from July 2022 as part of the Rencontres d’Arles, will feature a selection of previously unseen images, selected in collaboration with the artist. The creation of this portfolio, which will become part of the LUMA Foundation’s collection, is part of its Living Archives Programme. From Accra to London and from London to Accra, from the end of the colonial era to the early 1990s, from studio portraits to press commissions, the exhibition offers a kaleidoscopic look at the work of the Ghanaian photographer, already present in major international collections. In addition to the most famous images, visitors will discover a large number of documents and vintage prints that provide a broader and deeper understanding of the importance of James Barnor’s work in the history of world photography and support the portfolio’s archival status. Being the first retrospective of James Barnor in France, this exceptional exhibition offers a privileged look at a transcontinental career that continues to inspire new generations of artists.
CANCELLED, Maria Hassabi
Landscaped park
From July 2, 2022
Since the early 2000s Maria Hassabi has developed a unique practice based on the relation of the live body to the still image and to the sculptural object. Utilising stillness and deceleration her works reflect on concepts of time and the human figure. The artist employs different media to emphasize the complexity of formal organization within a variety of processes. In her new work, specifically created for LUMA, Maria Hassabi integrates the unique surrounding landscape with five female performers as they consider a transgenerational perspective of womanhood.
Afrophon’
Fair of Contemporary Art Books from Africa
Les Forges: From July 2, 2022
The Tower: From 4 to 6, July, 2022
From July 4 to 6 July, LUMA Arles presents the first edition of Afrophon’, a three-day fair dedicated to contemporary art books and independent publications from Africa. Afrophon’ brings together a variety of editorial voices who seek to challenge ideas about the printed matter. A public program will also include in-person talks, events, workshops and specially themed presentations by emerging and established practitioners. Afrophon’ invites publishers from various regions of the African continent to share their work with peers, speak about their interests, and discuss shared innovative approaches that define the evolving role of independent art publishing in contemporary culture.
From July 2 and throughout the summer, an exhibition will host a reading room of numerous rare editions of African publishers. The Afrophon’ reading room will focus on interdisciplinarity but also political, social and personal aspects that are at the heart of sharing information through publications.
Orpheus was musing upon braised words, under the light rain of a blazing fog, snakes are deaf and dumb anyway, oblivion buried in the depths of insomnia
Julien Creuzet
The Tower, Level -3 Underground
From July 2, 2022
Julien Creuzet will develop a unique new commission, as a result of his recent residency at LUMA Arles. In his work - which was also shortlisted for the 2021 Prix Marcel Duchamp - Creuzet mixes a wide variety of styles and influences. Philosophy meets technology, while everyday Caribbean iconography and African literature is juxtaposed with imagery borrowed from a global network of references, including nature and music. His new commission, the largest to-date in France, reflects his simultaneous experience of visual culture from extremely diverse sources and his practice of reworking and recombining unique stimuli into something new.
Moby Dick; or, The Whale, Wu Tsang
La Grande Halle
On 6, 8 & 9, July 2022
Wu Tsang’s film and orchestral piece Moby Dick; or, The Whale transforms the literary classic story into an aesthetic investigation into racism and authority, cosmopolitanism and community, seduction and queer lifestyles. Drawing on the aesthetic devices of silent films and accompanied live by the Zurich Chamber Orchestra (ZKO), Tsang takes on the story of Captain Ahab, who is sailing through the colonized world of the mid-19th Century with men who speak various languages and have different skin colors and cultures. Their aim is to kill the white whale Moby Dick – a whale that is more than an animal, but rather an ambiguous and shimmering metaphor that can stand for good as well as evil, for God or for the devil, for the violence of nature or its beauty. Together with the group Moved by the Motion, as well as actors and dancers drawn from the ensemble of the Schauspielhaus Zurich, Wu Tsang is making a silent film about the whale and the crew of men hunting it down. Tsang’s long-time collaborator Asma Maroof is writing the music for the ZKO together with American composer Caroline Shaw. Moby Dick; or, The Whale is co-commissioned by the Schauspielhaus Zürich, LUMA Foundation, Superblue, TBA21–Academy, HARTWIG ART FOUNDATION, The Shed, DE SINGEL and The Whitney Museum of American Art.
