Chantal Akerman: Moving Through Time and Space

Upper-Level GalleryMAC@MAM, October 16, 2008 - January 25, 2009

Presents the first major traveling exhibition in the United States of works by one of the great filmmakers or our time. The five projects of Chantal Akerman: Moving through Time and Space span more than two decades of Akerman's career, opening a window onto the permeable border between the creative domains of fact and fiction. Recognized as one of the most important directors in film history, Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman presents her key films and major installations, spotlighting the crossover genres of film and visual art. Exploring the politics of territorial borders, recent histories of racism, and the poetics of personal journeys, Akerman’s films touch on ideas about image, gaze, space, performance, and narration.

The exhibition features multi-media video installations from her documentary series: D'Est (From the East), From the Other Side, Là-Bas (2006), Sud, and Women of Antwerp in November (2008), a new work created especially for the exhibition.

D'Est (1993) retraces a journey from the end of summer to the deepest winter, from East Germany, across Poland and the Baltics, to Moscow in a compendium of striking images of Eastern Europe and its citizens in transition.From the Other Side (1999) is an unsentimental look at the plight of Mexican immigrants as they attempt the dangerous crossing from Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico to Douglas, Arizona. Sud (1999) was inspired by Akerman's love for the work of the renowned southern writers William Faulkner and James Baldwin but quickly shifted from an elegant meditation on the south to a passionate documentary capturing the tumultuous aftermath of the murder of James Byrd Jr. in Jasper, Texas. Là-Bas is a rare self-reflective piece on Akerman's Jewish heritage filmed nearly exclusively in her apartment in Tel Aviv.

Chantal Akerman: Moving Through Time and Space features a new two-channel video installation, Women from Antwerp in November. The work is comprised of two monumentally scaled projections and explores notions of time and space through a series of short vignettes alternating between color and black and white, each featuring women smoking at night in various ambiguous settings. These short narratives – presented together in a long horizontal, split screen format – offer a compelling array of psychological and emotional scenarios as women engage in wordless social interplay. On the opposite wall, a single frame shows a languid four-minute loop filmed in black and white of a young woman lighting, smoking and extinguishing her cigarette. Women from Antwerp in November is redolent in an atmosphere of 1950s French and American film noir, touching on Akerman’s foundation in feminist filmmaking and her deep connection to a highly personal, yet distant, cinematic point of view.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Chantal Akerman was born in Brussels in 1950. She now lives and works in Paris. She has made more than twenty-five films over thirty years. She has been awarded a Lumiere Award (France’s Academy Award) and a FIRPRESCI Prize (International Federation of Film Critics), was nominated for the Golden Lion (Venice Film Festival), and was an artist-in-residence at Harvard University. She has exhibited her films and installations internationally.

Chantal Akerman: Moving Through Time and Space is organized by Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston, in collaboration with the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Miami Art Museum (a MAC@MAM presentation), and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. The exhibition and publication have been made possible by generous grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, CIFO (Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation), Porsche Cars North America, Inc. and MAM's Annual Exhibition Fund. Additional support for the catalogue was provided by the Barbara Lee Family Foundation Fund at the Boston Foundation. The commissioning of Chantal Akerman's new work is made possible by the Ella Fontanals Cisneros Collection. Additional support is provided by Artemide and MAM’s Annual Exhibition Fund. The artist’s travel has been made possible by the French Embassy Cultural Services. In Miami, Chantal Akerman: Moving Through Time and Space is a MAC@MAM program organized by Adjunct Curator Rina Carvajal.