Each year, Park Nights presents a series of new performance commissions in Serpentine’s annual architectural commission, the Serpentine Pavilion which becomes the stage for a series of interdisciplinary artistic engagements on selected evenings this summer and autumn.
Since 2002, Park Nights has presented new works across art, music, film, theatre, dance, literature, philosophy, fashion, and technology. Each year’s commissions respond to the Pavilion and offer audiences unique ways to experience architecture and performance. The programme has supported many artists in the early stages of their careers, as well as pioneering writers and thinkers from around the world.
Previous programming has featured artists Etel Adnan, Eleanor Antin, Meriem Bennani, Black Quantum Futurism, Shawanda Corbett, Rhea Dillon, John Glacier, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Joseph Grigely, Dorothy Iannone, Arthur Jafa, Klein, Alexander Kluge, Linton Kwesi-Johnson, Lina Lapelyte, Mica Levi, Carrie Mae Weems, Oscar Murillo, Fred Moten together with Eileen Myles, Precious Okoyomon, Sondra Perry, Adam Phillips, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Pedro Reyes, TELFAR, Leslie Thornton, Wolfgang Tillmans, Kamasi Washington, Ai Weiwei, among many others.
Serpentine Park Nights 2023 is curated by Claude Adjil, Curator at Large, with Liz Stumpf, Assistant Curator.
Serpentine Pavilion
The 22nd Pavilion is designed by French Lebanese Paris-based architect Lina Ghotmeh, and on view until 29th October 2023 with Goldman Sachs supporting the annual project for the 9th consecutive year. Inspired by the architect’s Mediterranean heritage and fervent discussions around the table over current affairs, politics, personal lives, and dreams, the Pavilion is titled À table – a French call to sit down together at a table to listen, engage and participate in dialogue while sharing a meal. As such, the interior of the Pavilion features a concentric table along the perimeter, inviting us to convene, sit down, think, share and celebrate exchanges that enable new relationships to form.
Artists
The Living and the Dead Ensemble are a group of artists, performers, and poets from Haiti, France, and the United Kingdom: Mackenson Bijou, Rossi Jacques Casimir, Dieuvela Cherestal, James Desiris, Louis Henderson, Léonard Jean Baptiste, Cynthia Maignan, Sophonie Maignan, Olivier Marboeuf, Mimétik Nèg (James Peter Etienne), Sachernka Anacassis. They produce texts, performances, films, and installations.
Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro is the author of the 2022 book Quando o sol aqui não mais brilhar: a falência da negritude (When the Sun No Longer Shines Here: The Collapse of Blackness), and she has participated in solo and group exhibitions across Brazil and internationally. Her most recent solo exhibition Remember When We Talked About Our Reunion took place at Mendes Woods DM, New York. Vitorino Brasileiro is one of the artists to participate in the 2023 Bienal de São Paulo.
Bambii is a Toronto-based DJ and producer known for her genre-spanning sets which embrace the spirit of dance and rave culture and open up new paths for the free exploration of music. Whether online or on dancefloors, her music celebrates Black diasporic dance music’s ever-expanding reach, and the relationships it forges between individuals, cultures, and spaces.
Christelle Oyiri is an artist and filmmaker. She is also known as DJ and electronic music producer CRYSTALLMESS and has performed around the world under this moniker. Over the past years, her work has appeared at Gladstone Gallery New York, Lafayette Anticipations, Haus der Kunst, and Tramway Glasgow amongst other venues. Oyiri engages with issues related to the collective memory of both forgotten and well-known mythologies, be they ancient or ultra-modern. She lives and works in Paris.
About Serpentine
Creating new connections between artists and society, Serpentine presents pioneering contemporary art exhibitions and cultural events with a legacy that stretches back over half a century, from a wide range of emerging practitioners to the most internationally recognised artists, writers, scientists, thinkers, and cultural thought leaders of our time. Based in London’s Kensington Gardens, across two sites, Serpentine North and Serpentine South, Serpentine features a year-round, free programme of exhibitions, architectural showcases, education, live events and technological activations, in the park and beyond the gallery walls.
The Serpentine Pavilion is a yearly pioneering commission, which began in 2000 with Dame Zaha Hadid. It features the first UK structures by some of the biggest names in international architecture. Public art has emerged as a central strand of Serpentine’s programme. Major presentations include a collection of Eduardo Paolozzi’s sculptures (1987), Anish Kapoor’s Turning the World Upside Down (2010), Lee Ufan presented Relatum – Stage (2018-19), Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s London Mastaba in the Serpentine Lake (2018), I LOVE YOU EARTH by Yoko Ono (2021), Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster In remembrance of the coming alien (Alienor), (2022), and Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg’s Pollinator Pathmaker (2022 – ongoing). Proud to maintain free access for all visitors, thanks to its unique location, Serpentine also reaches an exceptionally broad audience and maintains a profound connection with its local community.
