Our City Dreams
January 26, 2009
Ghada Amer, Knotty but Nice, 2005
Chiara Clemente, daughter of painter Francesco Clemente, follows five New York-based female artists for her documentary Our City Dreams. Swoon, Nancy Spero, Kiki Smith, Ghada Amer, and Maria Abramovich (all heavy hitters in the art world) were filmed over the course of two years as they lived and worked in New York City. Highlights of the film include:
Swoon’s first solo exhibition at Deitch Projects in New York, Ghada Amer’s return to her Egyptian homeland, Kiki Smith’s traveling retrospective, Marina Abramovic’s weeklong series of performances at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and Nancy Spero’s preparations of a new piece for the 2007 Venice Biennale.
Clemente has chosen five completely fascinating and dynamic artists, so I’m naturally curious as to what they are like as people. I thought that the recent documentary about Alice Neel (filmed by her grandson Andrew Neel) did an exceptional job of portraying the plights experience of the female artist; this should be an interesting complement to that, as most of these artists are of a different generation than Neel. Our City Dreams debuts at Film Forum February 4 – 17. Film website is here.
