Protocinema in collaboration with Artspace Sydney at Kunsthalle Tbilisi presents Angelica Mesiti’s 3-channel video installation Relay League, 2017.
Mesiti’s installation engages with the language of Morse code as an extinct form of communication. In this case a musician-composer, a dancer and two dancers who have developed their own movement-sign-language, each interpret the final Morse code message sent by the French Navy on 31st January 1997: ‘Calling all. This is our last cry before our eternal silence’. For over a decade, Mesiti’s oeuvre has investigated non-verbal forms of communication. Inspired by this poetic Morse code signal, Mesiti translates the dots and dashes through music and performance to enable the language to ‘speak’ once more. Installed in three halls of a disused Wine Factory at the center of Tbilisi, built in 1896, in a resurgence of art and culture in post-Soviet Georgia, communication takes on an additional layer of significance of voice and agency. Angelica Mesiti’s Relay League was commissioned by Artspace Sydney with support of the Commissioning Partner the Keir Foundation and the Australia Council for the Arts.
Angelica Mesiti was born in 1976 in Sydney and lives in Paris. Mesiti will represent Australia at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. Selected exhibitions include: Relay League, Artspace, Sydney [touring nationally and internationally] (2017); Citizens Band, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2016); The Colour of Saying, Lilith Performance Studio, Malmo, Sweden (2015); Angelica Mesiti: The Calling, Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre, Canada (2015); Station to Station, Barbican Gallery, London (2015); The Immigration Songs: Angelica Mesiti and Malik Nejmi, MAXXI, Rome (2014); You Imagine What You Desire, 19th Biennale of Sydney (2014); Mom, am I Barbarian?, Istanbul Biennial, Turkey (2013). Mesiti’s work is in major collections in Australia and internationally, including: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, San Francisco; Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt; Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space, Tokyo; The Art Institute of Chicago, USA; and Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
More Information: Tamar Janashia: tamarjanashia@cumalab.com; info@kunsthalletbilisi.org
and Mari Spirito: mari@protocinema.org
