UK Premières and conversations: Manthia Diawara and Sarah Morris: An evening in two parts
As a prelude to the 2017 GUEST, GHOST, HOST: MACHINE! Marathon, filmmaker and theorist Manthia Diawara and artist Sarah Morris premiere their new films and discuss them with Hans Ulrich Obrist.
7pm: Sarah Morris presents Finite and Infinite Games (2017, 40’).
8:30pm: Manthia Diawara presents An Opera of the World (2017, 70’)
A native of Mali, Diawara received his education in France and later travelled to the United States for his university studies. He has taught at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of We Won’t Budge: An African Exile in the World (Basic Civitas Books, 2003), Black-American Cinema: Aesthetics and Spectatorship (ed. Routledge, 1993), African Cinema: Politics and Culture (Indiana University Press, 1992), and In Search of Africa (Harvard University Press, 1998). He has published widely on the topic of film and literature of the Black Diaspora. Professor Diawara also collaborated with Ngûgî wa Thiong’o in making the documentary Sembene Ousmane: The Making of the African Cinema and directed the German-produced documentary Rouch in Reverse.
Morris is best known for her complex abstractions in both painting and film. She has created a new language of place and politics, making her one of the most intriguing artists of her generation. She has been exhibited internationally including solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Zürich (2000), the Nationalgalerie in Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2001), Kunstforeningen, Copenhagen (2004), Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2005), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2005), Fondation Beyeler (2008), Lenbachhaus, Munich (2008), Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2009), Wexner Center for the Arts (2012), Kunsthalle Bremen (2013), M-Museum Leuven (2015) and Kunsthalle Wien (2016) among many others.