The GAMeC - Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art of Bergamo and the In Between Art Film Foundation , with the Frac Bretagne of Rennes , are pleased to announce Dreamless Night , the solo exhibition of the Lebanese artist and director Ali Cherri (Beirut, 1976) , winner of the Silver Lion of the 2022 Venice Art Biennale .

The exhibition, which will open in October at GAMeC and then be hosted at Frac Bretagne from February 2024, will be the largest presentation to date of Ali Cherri's multimedia practice, which includes films, video installations, drawings and sculptures .

Curated by Alessandro Rabottini and Leonardo Bigazzi , respectively Artistic Director and Curator of the In Between Art Film Foundation, Dreamless Night is the first exhibition project launched as part of Unison , a new biennial initiative promoted by the Foundation to commission and produce exhibitions dedicated to images in motion in collaboration with Italian and international public institutions .

The Spazio Zero of GAMeC will host The Watchman (2023), an unprecedented video work by the artist commissioned and produced by the Foundation , which will be presented on this occasion in the form of a large video installation .

Set in Louroujina, a small village in the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, the film centers on the figure of a soldier guarding the southern border with the recognized Republic of Cyprus under Greek Cypriot authority. In his prolonged and boring shifts, the hills inhabited by the "enemy" become the place of his fantasies and reveries. The Watchman continues the artist's critical investigation of border politics, the construction of nationhood, and the radical potential of the imagination. Ali Cherri also evokes the historical connections of migration between Cyprus and Lebanon, as well as those between Nicosia , the divided capital of Cyprus, and his native Beirut , which was also divided during the Lebanese civil war.

In the GAMeC rooms , unpublished sculptures and drawings by the artist will also be presented, created specifically for the exhibition , which refer to the symbolic elements and characters of the film, as well as the geographical and cultural landscape of Cyprus .