This large-scale international group exhibition Desire: A Revision from the 20thCentury to the Digital Age, is co-curated by Yuko Hasegawa, Artistic Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, and Rachel Thomas, Senior Curator; Head of Exhibitions, IMMA. The exhibition explores the evolving role of desire in art and life and its relationship to structures of power. New commissions of contemporary works alongside a succinct selection of master works of the 20th-century offer a unique examination of the relationship between desire, technological advancements, and its impact on social structures.
Featuring an exciting selection of modern masterworks and landmark contemporary art works by Matthew Barney, Frank Bowling, Lee Bul, Oisín Byrne, Helen Chadwick, Dorothy Cross, David Douard, Marcel Duchamp, Justine Emard, Tracey Emin, Awol Erizku, Max Ernst, Cao Fei, Genieve Figgis, Ann Maria Healy, Elaine Hoey, Juliana Huxtable, James Joyce, Bharti Kher, Jonah King, Seiha Kurosawa, Yayoi Kusama, René Magritte, Koji Nakazono, David O’Reilly, Eddie Peake, Tschabalala Self, Patrick Staff, Mickalene Thomas and VALIE EXPORT.
Spanning over 100 years, the exhibition explores the development of desire through the lens of the eurocentric male gaze and its influence in shaping artistic depictions of desire in contemporary culture.
The exhibition includes collaborations and talks across the museum campus. Audiences are encouraged to consider how the primal and nostalgic nature of desire has been refashioned into a deeply complex and often alien element of one’s own identity in both physical and digital realities, and to question whether desire is the fundamental motivation of all action.
