The solo exhibition (international museum preview) by the Egyptian artist Wael Shawky (Alexandria, Egypt, 1971) entitled I Am Hymns will open to the public on Wednesday 17 April 2024, in the Palazzo Grimani Museum (“Ala Tribuna”) in Venice. of the New Temples.

Curated by Massimo Osanna (General Director of Museums of the Ministry of Culture), Andrea Viliani (Co-curator of the Pompeii Commitment program. Archaeological subjects) and Gabriel Zuchtriegel (Director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii), the exhibition is organized in collaboration between the Museum of Palazzo Grimani and the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, and accompanies the artist's participation in the 60th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, where Shawky was invited to represent the Arab Republic of Egypt at the Egypt Pavilion.

The exhibition brings together the film work I Am Hymns of the New Temples - created by the artist in 2023 and which, after its preview at the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, is presented in Venice as an international museum preview - and a selection of multi- materials and drawings created by the artist between 2022 and 2024. The exhibition project is conceived as an ideal dialogue between different spaces and times, in which contemporary works coexist with the archaeological works and historical halls of Palazzo Grimani, outlining a path that from the Camaron d'Oro it leads prospectively to the so-called Tribune, also known as the Antiquarium or Camerino delle Antichità, the true fulcrum of the palace and its narratives.

Narrator of cognitive and expressive processes suspended between the documentable and the imaginable, Wael Shawky explores the ways in which stories were written and told and analyzes how they also shaped historical reality. In his works - which include film, drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, performance and theatrical direction, always the result of research into historical and literary sources - Shawky predisposes us to a position of awareness towards ancient narrative mechanisms and contemporary, with which historical, social and cultural facts were interpreted and transmitted and, crossing space and time, evokes a simultaneously factual and imaginary dimension of history and society, as if they were never definable once and for all , or from just one point of view.