Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige. Ismyrne

Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige use their work to explore the production of knowledge, the rewriting of history and the construction of imaginaries, but also the forms of contemporary narrative, with reference to the experience of their own country but also others. With its mixture of the individual and the geographic, their investigative approach, involving questioning in the field, results in a singular aesthetic. These questions powerfully inform their cinematic work.

That is why, in agreement with Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Jeu de Paume has decided to present a selection of films in the auditorium that will give visitors the chance to discover or rediscover their work as filmmakers in the company of guests such as Etel Adnan and Antoine Thirion.

Ismyrne (2016, 50’, French)
Joana Hadjithomas and Etel Adnan met fifteen years ago. They soon become firm friends. Together they share a city, Izmir, the former Smyrna, in Turkey. Having lived in an imaginary Smyrna, where they have never set foot, Etel and Joana are now faced with the question of History and how to transmit it, questioning their attachment to imaginary objects, places and constructions, and also to mythologies, to imaginaries without images. Their personal experiences, the narrative of their lives, form a kind of backdrop to the changes that occurred after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, interrogating frontiers and concepts of identity and belonging.

Tuesday 28 June, 7 pm, screening of the video “Ismyrne,” (2016, 50’, French) followed by a conservation between the artists with writer and translator Omar Berrada and artist and poet Etel Adnan (to be confirmed).
Admission: 3 euros or free with that day’s exhibition ticket.