NOTTINGHAM.- This summer
Nottingham Contemporary presents a major and unconventional exhibition in two 'Acts' dedicated to Jean Genet, the celebrated poet of revolt. Act One is a solo exhibition by Marc Camille Chaimowicz, the influential London-based artist who was born in post-War Paris. New works in film, slide projection and sculpture evoke the early Genet—the former prisoner, thief, army deserter and vagabond who turned brutal experience into sexually fevered poetry.
Chaimowicz's exhibition focuses on Genet's The Maids (1948), about two servants who revolt against their mistress. His installation takes the form of a strange ornate domestic interior that suggests a space Genet might wish to inhabit. It hosts several 'guests', principally Alberto Giacometti, who is represented by six major sculptures and paintings, together with drawings and furniture, generously lent by Fondation Giacometti, Centre Pompidou and Tate. They include the finest of Giacometti's portraits of Genet; the two had an intense dialogue in the early 50s, and Picasso considered Genet's 'l'Atelier d'Alberto Giacometti' the greatest essay on art. Other guests include Tariq Alvi, Lukas Duwenhögger and Wolfgang Tillmans, each showing portraits of young men. Objects from Her Majesty's Prison Service Collection evoke Genet's poetic transfiguration of condemned men into erotic saints.
Act One is a significantly expanded sequel to Chaimowicz's exhibition at The Gallery at NUCA, Norwich, initiated by Lynda Morris. It is also a sequel to his acclaimed Jean Cocteau exhibition at Norwich Gallery and Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham, in 2003.
The second Act is a group exhibition, curated by Alex Farquharson, inspired by the late, anti-colonial Genet, beginning with his final controversial plays, The Blacks (1958) and The Screens (1961). In particular, it evokes Genet's life with, and campaigning on behalf of, the Black Panther Party and the Palestinian Fedayeen in the early 70s, recollected in his final major work, the almost Proustian Prisoner of Love (1986), written to Mozart's Requiem while dying of throat cancer.
Highlights include a new installation by Lili Reynaud-Dewar (with Pierre Giquel and Sabisha Friedberg) in the form of four walls, made from blankets and colour sections with raised fists (in black, pink and white) relating to Genet's ironic and self-implicating critique of race. Sabisha, who studied philosophy with Angela Davis, is heard reciting fragments from Genet's Prisoner of Love and The Declared Enemy from each wall, while books cited by Genet on the condition of North African immigrants in Paris and a child-size Black Panther uniform are amongst the objects they display.
The Otolith Group present Nervus Rerum, set in Jenin refugee camp, whose soundtrack also partially derives from Prisoner of Love. Latifah Echakhch has covered the walls in large charcoal numbers referring to unrealised UN resolutions on Palestine / Israel. As well as presenting a large selection of his posters and editions of the Black Panther newspaper, we are realising three murals inside and outside the building by Emory Douglas, the Panthers' Minister of Culture. Other works include Mona Hatoum's glazed ceramic grenades, Genet-like in their understanding of revolution as both beautiful and violent, and a Genet-related oil stick painting by Glenn Ligon together with a white-faced portrait of Malcolm X and a work in black neon. We will also be presenting several 'Scotch Art' canvases from the late 60s by Gil J Wolman, who co-founded the Lettrist International.
