The Late Chantal Akerman Honoured With Major Retrospective At Ambika P3

Ambika P3 and A Nos Amours present a major exhibition of work by the internationally celebrated filmmaker and artist, Chantal Akerman, who died earlier this month at the age of 65. Entitled NOW, this will be the first large scale exhibition in the English-speaking world of Akerman’s installation work and will coincide with the UK premiere of her new film, No Home Movie (2015), on Friday 30 October at Regent Street Cinema, London. None of the works in the exhibition has been previously exhibited in the UK.

‘Comparable in force and originality to Godard or Fassbinder, Chantal Akerman is arguably the most important European director of her generation’ J. Hoberman.

There will be seven installation works at Ambika P3: the centrepiece will be NOW (2015), a powerful 8 channel video installation with surround sound originally commissioned for the Venice Biennale 2015. For this work, Akerman collected images from desert regions, specifically violently contested regions in the Middle East, her aim to present the current condition of violence and conflict as lived experience.

Other works in the exhibition span from 1995 and investigate a variety of emotive themes such as issues around the border of Mexico and America (A Voice in the Desert, 2002), the atom bomb and Hiroshima (Maniac Summer 2009), woman reclaiming images of herself (In The Mirror), the dichotomous relationship between presence and absence (Maniac Shadows 2013), the Eastern bloc countries before the fall of Communism (D’Est 1995) and the sublime (Tombée de nuit sur Shanghaï 2007).

About the artist:

Chantal Akerman (born 6 June 1950, Brussels, died 5 October 2015, Paris) was one of the most unpredictable, farsighted, indefinable, rigorous and playful film artists of her generation. While showing the troublesome complexity of human existence, Akerman’s works are filled with beautiful imagery, music, magic of chance, yearning and hope, yet she also investigates hot-button themes such as racism in the American South, illegal immigration, and terrorism in the Middle East.

Chantal Akerman: NOW – Ambika P3 – 30 October to 6 December 2015

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