During the Nocturne of April, WIELS invites you to discover the film Ismyrna (2016), presented in dialogue with the exhibition Confabulations.
Echoing the questions explored in the work of Marie Zolamian, this film by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige reflects on the memory of a place shaped by exile, through a filmed conversation with Etel Adnan. An invitation to reimagine a cartography of the present from fragments of stories, memories, and heritage.
Free access.
Film in French and English, with English subtitles.
Credits: Video still from Ismyrna (2016), copyright of the artists Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige
Over twenty-five years ago, the artists met poet and painter Etel Adnan, and a strong friendship bound them. Both Joana and Etel drew their origins from the once Ottoman city of Smyrna, known today as Izmir. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Joana’s paternal Greek family was forcibly expelled by the nascent Turkish army. Etel’s mother, also Greek, married to a Syrian officer from the Ottoman army, was uprooted from Smyrna and settled in Lebanon. Both families transmitted, respectively, to their daughter and granddaughter, memories of places shaped by the sorrow of loss, marked by the grief of forced exile and by irrevocable departures. Confronting their constructed imaginaries of Smyrna, Joana and Etel question this constitutive legacy. Can we live today, as Adnan asks, “out of nostalgia, in an eternal present?” Etel and Joana revisit family stories and personal recollections. Through this prism, the region’s modern history is explored—shifting borders, identitarian affiliations, multiplicity of belongings, and the fabrication of an imaginaire without images.
Filmmakers and artists, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, question the fabrication of images and representations, the construction of imaginaries, and the writing of history. Their works create thematic and formal links between photography, video, performance, installation, sculpture, and cinema, being documentary or fiction films, such as Je Veux Voir (2008), A Perfect Day (2005), The Lebanese Rocket Society (2012), and Memory Box (2021). They have received awards at the most important international film festivals throughout the years. Their artworks are part of the most important exhibitions and collections. They were awarded the prestigious Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2017 for their art project Unconformities. Their long-term research is based on personal or political documents, traces of the invisible and the absent, histories kept secret, and archaeological undergrounds of cities.
Hadjithomas and Joreige were both born in Beirut, Lebanon, and currently live and work between Beirut and Paris.
ISMYRNA, 2016
In conversation with Etel Adnan
Part of the project I Stared At Beauty So Much
HD video, 50 min
Co-produced by Abbout Productions (Beirut), Sharjah Art Foundation, and Jeu de Paume (Paris) for Two Suns in a Sunset, an exhibition curated by Hoor Al Qasimi, Marta Gili, Okwui Enwezor, and José Miguel Cortés
Editing: Tina Baz
Sound editing: Lama Sawaya
Music: Charbel Haber and Marc Codsi