The solo exhibition (international museum premiere) I Am Hymns of the New Temples - أنا تراتیل المعابد الجدیدة of Egyptian artist Wael Shawky (Alexandria, 1971) will open to the public on Wednesday 17 April 2024, at the Museo di Palazzo Grimani ('Ala Tribuna') in Venice. Curated by Massimo Osanna (General Director of Italy’s National Museums), Andrea Viliani (Co-curator of the programme Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters) and Gabriel Zuchtriegel (General Director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii), the exhibition is organised in collaboration between the Museo di Palazzo Grimani and the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, and accompanies the artist's participation in the 60th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, where Shawky has been invited to represent the Arab Republic of Egypt in the Egypt Pavilion.

The exhibition brings together the filmic work I Am Hymns of the New Temples - أنا تراتیل المعابد الجدیدة – realised by the artist in 2023 and which, after its premiere at the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, is presented in Venice as an international museum premiere – and a selection of multi-material works and drawings realised by the artist between 2022 and 2024. The exhibition project is conceived as an ideal dialogue between different spaces and times, in which contemporary artworks coexist with the archaeological works and the historical halls of Palazzo Grimani, outlining a path that prospectively leads from the Camaron d'Oro to the so-called Tribuna, also known as the Antiquarium or Camerino delle Antichità, the true fulcrum of the palace and its narration.

A narrator of processes of knowledge and expression, half way between the documentable and the imaginable, Wael Shawky explores the ways in which stories have been written and told and analyses how these have also shaped historical reality. In his works – which mix film, drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, performance and theatrical direction, and which are always the result of research into historical and literary sources – Shawky places us in a position of awareness of the ancient and contemporary narrative mechanisms used to interpret and transmit historical, social and cultural facts and, crossing time and space, evokes a both factual and imaginary dimension of history and society, as if they could never be defined once and for all, or only from one point of view.

Filmed in the summer of 2022 among the ruins of ancient Pompeii, struck by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, the film shows what rises to the surface of the different cultures that make Pompeii an authentic theatre of Mediterranean cultures, with different yet inevitably connected narrations.

The production of the work I Am Hymns of the New Temples – winner of the public notice PAC – Piano per l’Arte Contemporanea 2020, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity – is the result of the collaboration between the Ministry of Culture and the Archaeological Park of Pompeii in the context of the programme Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters co-founded by Massimo Osanna and Andrea Viliani. I Am Hymns of the New Temples represents the first artwork produced, in 2023, in the context of this programme, which is dedicated to the formation of a contemporary art collection for the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, the first archaeological site in the world to have a long-term contemporary art programme and a permanent collection dedicated to contemporary arts, with the aim of researching and enhancing the contemporary nature of the themes and values expressed by the Italian and international archaeological heritage. LaM-Lille Métropole Musée d’art moderne, d’art contemporain, d’art brut is the Partner Institution for the international valorisation of the work. Two other Italian institutions, Fondazione Teatro di San Carlo and Academy of Fine Arts of Naples, have also collaborated in the realisation of the work, with the support of Galleria Lia Rumma, Milan/ Naples.

Winner of the public notice PAC2020 - Piano per l’Arte Contemporanea, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.

Supplementary press materials available from Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters’ press office: presentation and synopsis of the film