As Europeans stray from the beaten paths of capital cities and drift toward the Mediterranean Sea, cultural spaces near the coast are hosting an array of noteworthy exhibitions. Located at the junction of land and sea, here are eight shows to see in the South of France, Ibiza, Naples, Palermo, Hydra, Istanbul, and Beirut.

Zoe Williams
‘Fondant’
Friche la Belle de Mai
Marseille, France
Through October 8, 2023

For ‘Fondant’, artist Zoe Williams’s first institutional solo show in France, the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Friche la Belle de Mai’s Panorama space are covered by an excess of purple and red silk drapes. Against this sensual backdrop, the exhibition unfolds as an unruly place of liberation from the commodification of taste – resurfacing the idea of camp, 59 years after Susan Sontag proclaimed her addiction to its alluring artifice. The artist lures visitors in with an emotional soundscape – a mix of baroque, bossa nova, and electronic rhythms – while a synthetic scent of flowers and sweat keeps the memory of Williams’s performance on the opening night alive. Dispersed throughout the space are her saucy photographs and glazed ceramics, which weave together domestic decor with sexy body parts and mythological animals, alongside flamboyant objets trouvés, such as an unmade pink bed, various lace undergarments, and coquettish glass pieces. Together, they turn the white cube into a fantastical set, a shrine to otherness which draws on the tension between solipsism and collective desire.

Veronica Bisesti
‘Dove brulica l’altrove’
Alfonso Artiaco
Naples, Italy
Through September 9, 2023

Located in the heart of Naples’s old town, the gallery Alfonso Artiaco presents contemporary art against the backdrop of an aristocratic palazzo. This summer, the 600 m² space – replete with frescoes and gilded ornaments – is dedicated to the work of Veronica Bisesti, an emerging Neapolitan artist. The show, ‘Dove brulica l’altrove’ (literally, ‘where elsewhere swarms’), echoes the writings of the early feminist Christine de Pizan, specifically her book City of Ladies (c. 1405). De Pizan imagines a city of freedom; a utopia made possible by the combined power of female virtues and natural elements. Through newly produced drawings, prints, and sculptures, Bisesti imagines her own elsewhere – one that is populated by roots, curative plants, female bodies, and minerals, offering generative metaphors and a vision of the future soaked in dazzling light.

‘Dream Machines’
Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art
Hydra, Greece
Through October 30, 2023

Set in a former slaughterhouse on the Greek island of Hydra, the Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art has, since 2009, has presented remarkable exhibitions by international artists such as Doug Aitken, Kiki Smith, and Kara Walker. This year, the foundation (founded by industrialist and collector Dakis Joannou) has gone one step further, enlisting curators Daniel Birnbaum and Massimiliano Gioni to conceive a group show. The resulting exhibition, ‘Dream Machines’, focuses on technology and its impact on human imagery, with new commissions and works from Joannou’s collection by artists including Marcel Duchamp, Pipilotti Rist, Seth Price, and Judith Hopf. Combining indoor and outdoor works, the show pieces together polarized reactions to technology, such as enthusiasm and paranoia, all on an island proud of its ban on every ‘wheeled vehicle’.

Callum Innes
Parra & Romero
Ibiza, Spain
Through September 23, 2023

Pushing back against the clubbing clichés and party stereotypes associated with Ibiza, Parra & Romero’s expansive location on the island invites visitors to discover the bohemian, rural soul of the Santa Gertrudis de Fruitera village. This summer, the 1,500 m² warehouse hosts two solo shows: On one side is Ian Wallace’s tribute to his late friend, the artist Lawrence Weiner; on the other side is Scottish artist Callum Innes’s inaugural exhibition with the gallery. Although Innes’s show is not quite a retrospective, it assembles an array of his works that investigate abstraction in painting – a theme that the artist has dedicated his entire career to. Known for his approach of ‘unpainting’, or subtracting layers and texture from canvases, Innes defies the overabundances typical of today’s societies, stripping down his work to what he believes is the very essence of art.

Berlinde de Bruyckere
‘City of Refuge I’
Nedko Solakov
‘Peyrassoldoodles among Philippe Austruy Collection’
Commanderie de Peyrassol, in collaboration with Galleria Continua
Flassans-sur-Issole, France
Through November 5, 2023

Located an hour’s drive from Saint Tropez, the Commanderie de Peyrassol is a sense-awakening destination, where the vision of art collector Philippe Austruy comes to life. The estate is home to not only rolling vineyards and wine-making facilities but also to a permanent art collection with open-air, site-specific works by international artists such as Niki de Saint Phalle and Dan Graham, as well as temporary exhibitions developed in collaboration with Galleria Continua. This season’s solo shows by artists Nedko Solakov and Berlinde De Bruyckere present artistic forays into the fragility of humankind and simultaneously reconnect to the history of the estate as a Catholic hamlet dating back to the 13th century. Solakov’s signature ink doodles, tiny and ironic, imbue the space with a human touch, while De Bruyckere’s reinterpretations of archangels present imposing bodies, signifying nature and mortality alongside notions of protection and hope.

Tamara Al Samerraei
‘Promise You Made’
Marfa’
Beirut, Lebanon
Through September 14, 2023

Marking Kuwait-born, Beirut-based artist Tamara Al Samerraei’s third solo show at Marfa’, ‘Promise You Made’ features two new bodies of paintings, soundtracked by musician and composer Jana Saleh’s solo piano piece Soupir (2020). In the ‘Studio’ series (all works 2023), Al Samerraei paints various views of her studio – based on photographs she took at an undisclosed yet charged moment in the past – with empty spots and walls dripping with paint. Details remain unshared, but in the paintings, one can recognize the artist’s signature unstretched linen canvases, their uneven edges mounted on supports, organic and vulnerable to the passage of time. Elsewhere, the artist’s ‘Black Book’ series features painted reproductions of photographic documentation of her diary of watercolor drawings. A form of appropriation of one’s own circumstances, Al Samerraei’s remediation of her life through art places a focus on enclosed places inhabited by inanimate objects; witnesses of a human world whose emotions cannot be unraveled.

‘Always Here’
Istanbul Modern
Istanbul, Turkey
Through November 2023

At a time marked by sociopolitical challenges, a historic re-election, and the upcoming 100th anniversary of the Turkish Republic, Istanbul Modern has reopened its doors after a five-year-long reconstruction project by Renzo Piano Building Workshop. Among its debut program is ‘Always Here’, a political showcase of works by 11 Turkish women artists, acquired with the museum’s Women Artists Fund and on view in gallery spaces for the first time. From Nilbar Güres’s critique of gender bias to Zeynep Kayan’s performative bodies reflecting on the human condition and Inci Eviner’s politics of space in everyday life, the exhibition – whose title pays homage to feminist art historian Linda Nochlin’s seminal essay ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ – reclaims the fundamental creative contributions of women in Turkish society.

Mario Merz
‘My Home’s Wind’
ZAC – Zisa Zona Arti Contemporanee
Palermo, Italy
Through November 19, 2023

A leading figure of the Arte Povera movement, Mario Merz has a legacy that is explored and expanded through exhibition programming organized by the Fondazione Merz. This year, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the artist’s death, the foundation put together Merz’s first retrospective in Sicily. The show, ‘My Home’s Wind’, fills ZAC’s industrial space with some of his most ground-breaking works, from Acqua Scivola (1969) – Merz’s first environmental artwork made of glass, which was displayed in the seminal group show ‘When Attitudes Become Form’, curated by Harald Szeemann at Kunsthalle Bern in 1969 – to five of his celebrated ‘Igloo’ sculptures. Essential yet powerful, Merz’s organic, simple homes seem to inhabit a space in which nature and civilization, chance, and intention, all manage to coexist.

Sara Dolfi Agostini is a writer, curator, and academic based between Naples and Malta.

Originally published on August 2, 2023.

Caption for full-bleed image: Urs Fischer, Chalk & Cheese, 2022. © Urs Fischer. Installation view, ‘Dream Machines’. DESTE Foundation Project Space, Slaughterhouse, Hydra. Photograph by Pinelopi Gerasimou.