OPENINGS
Tania Mouraud: A Retrospective 4 March – 5 October Centre Pompidou-Metz, Lorraine, France
Working across mediums since the 1960s, Tania Mouraud’s socially engaged art practice is surveyed at Centre Pompidou-Metz, from the symbolic burning of her paintings in 1968, and her ‘initiation rooms’ designed to create a space for introspection in standard homes, to the billboard interventions broadcasting her discontentment with society, and works with words and language. Since 1998, she has worked with photography, video, painting and sound. Alongside 70 works of art, and a reconstruction of Mouraud’s first initiation room One More Night (1970), the retrospective expands across the city of Metz from the end of June, incorporating eight partner institutions and venues that will explore diverse aspects of Mouraud’s work. In addition, City Performance N°1 will be revived throughout the city of Metz and its suburbs: a major work from 1970s, it originally consisted of 54 billboard signs printed with ‘NI’ (meaning neither/nor), placed throughout the city of Paris.
The Armory Show 5 – 8 March Piers 92 & 94, Twelfth Avenue at 55th Street, New York City
New York’s Armory Show returns with more associated events and satellite fairs than ever. Covering modern and contemporary art, the show pays particular attention to emerging galleries with a significant portion of exhibition space devoted to Armory Presents, highlighting dynamic galleries under 10 years old. The Focus section, curated by Omar Kholeif with Edge of Arabia and Art Jameel, looks at artists working in the Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean (MENAM). Keep an eye out for A Convention of Tiny Movements (2015), the special on-site project by this year’s commissioned artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan, who has also contributed to the overall presentation of this year’s show — in his own words: ‘a rare opportunity that allows art and artists to be the subject of the fair, as well as a key part of its infrastructure.’
Bill Viola 5 March – 3 May Kukje Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
This major exhibition of recent works provides an overview of Bill Viola’s video installations from 2005 to 2014, revealing a practice that continues to expand the possibilities for video and time-based imagery. Seven video installations are on show at Kukje Gallery, including the largest, Inverted Birth (2014), and three major works from Viola’s Mirage series, which use the desert landscape as a metaphor for spiritual seeking. The diptych Night Vigil (2005/09) was developed from an epic four-hour-long video piece made for a new production of Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde, directed by Peter Sellars. The two adjacent screens portray a woman and a man, who use fire to traverse the darkness that separates them in a potent allegory of desire.
LAST CHANCE TO SEE
Face to Face: The Oldest Masks in the World Until 7 March Israel Museum, Jerusalem
The Israel Museum celebrates its 50th anniversary throughout 2015 with a programme exploring Israel’s aesthetic culture. In Face to Face, the oldest masks in the world are exhibited together for the first time. These extremely rare stone masks were made in the Judean Hills and the Judean Desert and are the oldest known human portraits. Powerful and characterful, they give us an insight into the cultural and spiritual world of the people who lived in this region during the Neolithic Period, 9,000 years ago. After two extensions, this extraordinary exhibition finally comes to a close on 7 March.