Chantal Akerman’s “Travelling” show at Jeu de Paume Paris

The Jeu de Paume, Paris, presents a rare panorama of the Belgian filmmaker’s life, research, and work. The exhibition, titled Chantal Akerman, Travelling, presents a series of installations of Akerman’s eminent cinematographic projects. Amongst them, Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), which confers a chilling political aura to an irremediably banal set of domestic routines. Nearby, D’Est (1992), a film made a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, overlaps onto an ethnographic project about Eastern European identity against a backdrop of misery. A morbid aspect, thinly veiled, seems to characterize the corpus of her work. 

The exhibition not only focuses on Akerman’s cinematographic projects but also sheds light on her attempts at going beyond films and into artistic video. Here, two of her installations are cohabiting: A Voice in the Desert (2002), calling attention to the route of clandestine migrants at the border between Mexico and the United States, and Self Portrait/Autobiography: A Work in Progress (1998) about the layered nature of identity. 

The archive room, the core of the exhibition, allows viewers to browse through the extensive files of Akerman’s testimonies – interviews, notes of intent, and film scripts – and compose their own representation of the late filmmaker. The multidisciplinary artist committed herself to capturing the ongoing friction between self and others, and through her many displacements shines the concept of wandering, nomadic solitude, one’s incapacity at finding their right place in the world. Whether in Brussels, Paris, or New York, her voice and visions reveal a restless inquiry into the nature of home. 

On view until January 19th, 2025. 

Jeu de Paume

1 Pl. de la Concorde, 75008 Paris

Text by Carmen Lili Roca.

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