Julie Mehretu: Kairos / Hauntological Variations
exhibition closing weekend

As the exhibition Julie Mehretu: Kairos / Hauntological Variations nears conclusion, several special events offer new experiences of works on show to the viewers—involving poetry, performance art, and choreography. Over the closing weekend, the Museum will be filled with powerful voices and moving bodies, bringing performers and audiences together. It is an invitation to see the Kairos up close—to feel it and be in the moment when change becomes possible as futures to come emerge in the immediate imaginatory.

 

The Rhode Island School of Design Commencement Address delivered by Julie Mehretu on behalf of the Class of 2026, titled “ Processing the Unbearable, Imagining the Radical.”  and translated into Polish for the MSN Magazine, establishes common grounds for what is about to happen during the final days of the exhibition. Addressing this year’s graduates, the artist discussed artistic pursuits as practicing uncertainty and doubt; she called for young people’s imagination to be used not just for describing the world they are now entering but also, and most importantly, for shaping its future forms. From this perspective, all closing events follow.

 

Held in the very exhibition space, readings from the book-length poem PIVOT by Imani Mason Jordan extend that line of thought through the power of language and voice. The text, inspired by the Haitian Revolution, deals with turning towards new expressions of freedom, towards communality and radical change. Mason Jordan’s inquiry is about such a future that would transcend the workings of violence, exclusion, and status quo, and about such language that would allow us to speak the world into existence anew.

 

Over the closing weekend, three performances of Wandering/Warsaw by John Jasperse Projects are planned. Unfolding in dialog with Julie Mehretu’s works on display, the piece invites viewers to follow dancers as they move throughout the gallery—for a new reading of the exhibition, as experienced through physical movement and presence in person. The project’s dramaturg Ariel Osterweis explains:

 

“Wandering emerged from a shared curiosity between multiple artists: who has the agency to wander, and how can we summon movement across space through the coalescence of visual, choreographic, and sonic imaginaries?”

Come and revisit the exhibition to reflect once again on what prompts Julie Mehretu to keep creating: today’s uncertainty and our ways of dealing with it; the world’s ruins and our notions of generating new life in it; and art’s role in this most important of all processes.

  

 

Julie Mehretu, Processing the Unbearable, Imagining the Radical

Speech on the pursuit of art as practice of the radical imaginatory, communality, and responsibility. Read in Polish in the MSN Magazine.

 

Imani Mason Jordan, PIVOT

Performed reading from the poem PIVOT. The text, inspired by the Haitian Revolution, employs the rhythmic power of language to explore and examine historical turns—from violence to freedom, from status quo to new forms of togetherness. Duration: ca 40 minutes

 

John Jasperse Projects, Wandering/Warsaw

Choreographed performance piece unfolding in dialogue with the exhibition Julie Mehretu: Kairos / Hauntological Variations. Duration: ca 60 minutes

Readings from PIVOT by Imani Mason Jordan are organized in collaboration with HELA Press.

The project Wandering/Warsaw by John Jasperse Projects was produced with support from the Cultural Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York State Council on the Arts, the James E. Robison Foundation, the Harkness Foundation for Dance, and the Kyle J. Mulroney Foundation. Artistic residency that allowed to pursue the project was provided by the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). Initial support for Wandering (first performed at MGG, NYC) was provided by Marian Goodman Gallery and Julie Mehretu Studio.