From July 1st, 2023

Theaster Gates

Theaster Gates is a protean thinker and a pioneering figure in the contemporary world.

His practice focuses on challenging established notions of space theory, materiality, and land, drawing on the history of ideas to often produce multisensory, sculptural and performative events. Gates’ artistic investment in the built environment and objecthood extends our historical and intuitional perception of reality.

Interested in exploring the life within things, he establishes in his practice the potential for recirculation of value and capital, exploiting the power of artistic agency, from a very pragmatic and realistic approach defined by collective desire and the aesthetics of the future.

In Summer 2023, LUMA Arles and Theaster Gates will begin a long-term project that will see Gates taking up residency in the city of Arles over several years, a period in which various elements and processes will manifest and be presented to audiences in specifically articulated moments and places.

Bouchra Khalili
The Circle & The Tempest Society

Central to Khalili’s work are notions of political action, minor histories of people and the struggles for liberation and solidarity. Language, oral history and historical archives are central to her investigations and are employed as a form of resistance.  

The Circle refers to the tradition of Al-Halqa, a centuries-old tradition of storytelling in public spaces in Morocco in which the audience is an essential part and where stories unfold in multiple layers. With history in constant dialogue with our present, the work is a meditation on civic belonging and the need for what the artist calls radical citizenship.

The video installation examines and reactivates the legacy of the Arab Workers Movement in and their theater groups Al Assifa and Al Halaka in France in the 1970s.

The Circle has been co-produced with the support of the LUMA Foundation, MACBA Barcelona and the Sharjah Art Foundation. 

Hans-Ulrich Obrist Archives - Chapter 3: Agnès Varda
A day without seeing a tree is a waste of a day

At the heart of the third chapter of the Hans-Ulrich Obrist archive lies his encounter with Agnès Varda (1928–2019), the filmmaker, feminist, and pioneer artist, central to the French New Wave film movement of the 50s and 60s.

Varda’s artistic career spans, in her own words, three distinct yet interconnected lives as a photographer, filmmaker, and visual artist. The exhibition highlights Obrist’s crucial role in introducing Varda to the world of art, leading to her first invitation to participate in a contemporary art exhibition.

Featuring unique works from Varda’s career and a selection of documents from Obrist’s archive, it reveals the interdisciplinary and curious nature of their shared vision.

Ahlam Shibli
Belonging belonging

Unfolding personal narratives, Ahlam Shibli’s work explores ways in which history can be reconstructed through the photographic lens.

Embedding herself in the life of her subjects, Shibli examines how conflicting opinions inform the production of private, political and social contexts. Her images register unrecognized perspectives on society by concentrating on particular communities, places and events.

Bringing together key photographic projects from her entire career alongside newly commissioned works created during her residency at LUMA Arles, the exhibition will reveal the many layers that compose the reality of the places Shibli has investigated.

LUMA Arles & Google - Research Initiative

In furtherance of LUMA’s long-term focus on the creative potential of innovation, LUMA Arles presents a series of three commissions by Shahryar Nashat, Rachel Rose, and Sara Sadik. Produced as part of a landmark research initiative in partnership with Google to leverage next-generation technology in service of artists’ visions, and developed over the course of a year with leading engineers, the three projects have embedded a wide range of advanced techniques in the fields of artificial intelligence, ambient sensors, colorimetry, biometrics, and human-machine interaction. Rather than an end in itself, innovation is harnessed as a means to further artistic expression, with artists interrogating the liminal space between digital presence, cognition and physical engagement. In exploring the creative edge of today’s most advanced technological tools, LUMA and Google seek to foster an artist-centric dialogue in fast-developing fields where original voices need to be amplified.

The LUMA Arles & Google research initiative was organized in partnership with Google ATAP, Google Arts & Culture and Google Brain. Thanks to Dr. Joelle Barral, Dr. Olivier Bau, Camille Bénech-Badiou, Dr. Lucas Dixon, Dr. Kelly Dobson, Laurent Gaveau, Sebastien Missoffe, Dr. Ivan Poupyrev, Emily Reif, Amit Sood, Jonathan Tanant, Gabriel Vergara II.

Shahryar Nashat
REVERSE RORSCHACH

In his installation REVERSE RORSCHACH (2023), Shahryar Nashat offers a nebulous window onto his bodily state, feelings, and brain function. Relinquishing the work of accessing his inner state — an effort traditionally associated with the artistic process — Nashat monitors his biological data via a device placed on his body at all times, which then visually translates it into Rorschach-like impressions via the text-to-image diffusion model Imagen. In turn, the viewer’s interpretation of the work is partially preordained by the standard readings associated with Rorschach’s tests, Imagen’s anthropomorphizing inclinations, as well as a series of ten illustrative sound pieces. By feeding an image generation software by text prompts, themselves automatically created by his own biometrics, Nashat brings two technological fronts into the traditional framework of the Rorschach, revealing further depths in the relationship between body and machine, while creating an ever-evolving, real-time self-portrait.

Rachel Rose 
The Last Day

A response to the artist’s daughter’s intuitive sense of loss and bewilderment  at the passing of a friend, Rachel Rose’s film The Last Day (2023) consists of over 4,000 still photographs. Shot in Rose’s children’s room over the course of 250 mornings and evenings, the stammering sequentiality and preternatural chromatic quality of the film’s individual images exposes the medium’s usually imperceptible workings. Idling by a rapid succession of the everyday objects found on the floor of the room — milk bottles, toys, blankets, blocks, books, rocks — a large radar sensor-enabled rug acts as a central protagonist by emitting light depending on its proximity to humans. As the artist’s daughter narrates her nascent grasp of finitude in a voiceover, the light radiating from the carpet increasingly brightens, eventually blanking out all forms.

Sara Sadik
XENON PALACE CHAMPIONSHIP

In her XENON PALACE series, Sara Sadik turns gallery spaces into fictional hookah lounges. At LUMA Arles, this ongoing project by the artist takes on a new, interactive dimension entitled XENON PALACE CHAMPIONSHIP (2023), in which the video is activated by the viewer. It features groups of men who gather to escape everyday life and compete against one another to train Xenons, fantastic creatures that emerge from wisps of smoke. A pair of hookah hoses, placed on either side of a large LED screen flanked by an army-grade PVC inflatable bench, feature gesture-recognition sensors and serve as controllers for a competitive fighting game, periodically interrupting the film. Starring Sadik’s close collaborator Émile-Samory Fofana as a lone-wolf protagonist striving to anchor his legacy by entering XENON PALACE’s Hall of Fame, the work furthers the artist’s exploration of masculine tropes and cultural alienation in virtual universes.

From July 3, 2023

Guest programs

Dior Photography and Visual Arts Award for Young Talents
The 6th edition of the Dior Photography and Visual Arts Award for Young Visual Arts Award Talents will be hosted at LUMA Arles. The exhibition will showcase the work of laureates selected among the artistic proposals of students from the most prestigious schools of photography and visual arts.


Les Rencontres de la photographie d’Arles
Every summer since 1970, over the course of more than forty exhibitions at various of the city’s exceptional heritage sites, including La Mécanique Générale, the Rencontres d’Arles has been a major influence in dissiminating the best of world photography and playing the role of a springboard for photographic and contemporary creative talents.