mounir fatmi participates in the Exhibition "Modern Times in Paris 1925" at Pola Museum of Art

2023/11/21

Mounir Fatmi will present a video work in the exhibition “Modern Times in Paris 1925 - Art and Design in the Machine Age” at the Pola Museum of Art in Hakone, which opens on 16 December. The work, “Modern Times, A History of a Machine” (2010), which is also a part of the exhibition title iself, will be shown in Japan for the first time.

The exhibition is a spectacular thematic exhibition that takes the Art Deco Expo in 1925 as its starting point and examines how the relationship between machines and humans has transformed over the past 100 years through a number of Japanese and international works. In addition to museum collections by Fernand Léger and Georges de Chirico as well as classic cars and Art Deco posters reflecting the times, Fatmi was selected as a contemporary artist's work.

Fatmi is a multi-media artist from Morocco who, while bearing the identity of Islamic culture, cuts through familiar issues in a variety of ways, and his work itself is often a critique of contemporary society. In Modern Times, the Arabic letters engraved in a circle symbolize the Arab countries moving forward at their own speed towards modernization. The artist has sent the following message regarding the exhibition.

”For me, the verses of the Koran and the prophet's advice and sentences written in circular Arabic calligraphy work not only as an aesthetic form but also like a computer code loaded with information and knowledge. That's why I had the idea of integrating it into a video installation that talks about modern times which will perhaps allow us to understand these messages. For me, it is very interesting to open religious books and use ancient texts in a contemporary context and I think this can give more visibility and push the new generation to be interested in all these ancient texts. As a large part of my work deals with the subject of technology and the archive.”

We appreciate your kind visit to the museum and contemplate the artist's intentions in the context of the long history of machines and humans.

■MODERN TIMES in Paris 1925: Art and Design in the Machine-age
Dates: Sat., December 16, 2023 – Sun., May 19, 2024, open daily
Venue: Pola Museum of Art
Opening hours :9：00–17：00 (Last admission: 16:30)
Website :
click here

For available works of Fatmi, please visit artist page of Art Front Gallery: Click here