October 31, 2024
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7:00 pm
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9:00 pm
ECHO: CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS AND THE ANCIENT WORLD
Dialogues with leading artists on the legacies of Antiquity
Whether it is from the materiality of statuary, painting, architecture and the decorative arts, or the intangible heritage of myths, rituals and systems of belief, artists today continue to draw inspiration from Hellenic civilization – and the cultures it borrowed from and influenced. Despite the centuries that separate them, the artists of the ancient world offer a rich terrain of aesthetics and symbolism for contemporary art.
An ongoing series of conversations with some of the world’s leading artists will give insight into their creativity while revealing the echoes of past civilizations that resonate in their work.
The season launches with British artist Tai Shani. Her fantastical tableaux are animated by costumed performers to transport us into a drama where the founding myths of the western world mutate to propose alternative futures. Shani’s transformative vision encompasses sculpture, performance, film and painting.
In 2011, in a commission for the LOOP festival from the FRAC Nord de Pas de Calais, she turned to Antigone, a tragedy written by Sophocles in 441 BC. The Theban princess, who dies after defying an edict preventing her from burying her brother, is reimagined in Shani’s Anti-Antigone End Time. Featuring a stage set rich with symbolic iconography, an original score by David J. Smith, performers and a narrator, this performance evokes not only the past – from antiquity to the avant garde iterations of the play in the work of modernists such as Jean Cocteau and Jean Anouihl – but also suggests alternative futures through the psyche of Antigone herself. In the words of art historian Kris Paulsen, Shani ‘tasks the viewer to not just dream how the world could be otherwise but asks for a commitment to its active remaking.’
Tai Shani’s work is currently on show at the Cosmic House, London (The world to me was a secret: caesious, zinnober, celadon, and virescent 1 May–20 December 2024). Co-winner of the 2019 Turner Prize, Shani’s recent exhibitions include the Contemporary Art Centre, Cincinnati and Turner Contemporary. Tai Shani is represented by Gathering, London.
The talk is followed by a drinks reception supported by Gathering.
