Renowned filmmaker and video artist Chantal Akerman gets her first solo exhibition in a U.S. museum with ยChantal Akerman: Moving Through Time and Space.ย The multi-media installations making up the exhibit are DยEst (From the East), Sud (South), De lยautre cรดtรฉ (From the Other Side), Lร -Bas (Down There) and an unnamed fifth installation, a new work created especially for the show that was filmed in Siberia. Mixing documentary filmmaking and video, the installations are marked by slow-moving action and extreme attention to detail, and theyยre about movement (physical and emotional) and transition.
For example, in De lยautre cรดtรฉ, Akerman looks at undocumented Mexican immigrants crossing from Sonora, Mexico, into Arizona, often trekking for days through the wilderness. She uses long camera angles to accentuate the miles and miles of fence along the Mexico-Arizona border and the solitude of the journey.
Akerman looks at a different journey in DยEst (From the East), which features multiple video monitors in one room that move the viewer from summer in East Germany to winter in Russia, crossing through Poland and other Baltic states. The transition is one of not only location but of politics, as her camera captures Eastern Europeยs move from its Cold War days to the fall of communism. (Several of Akermanยs films will be screened next month at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Watch these pages for more details.) 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Through March 29. Blaffer Gallery, 120 Fine Arts Building, University of Houston. For information, call 713ย743ย9530 or visit www.hfac.uh.edu. Free.
Tuesdays-Saturdays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Starts: Jan. 18. Continues through March 29, 2008
This article appears in Jan 17-23, 2008.