Renzo Martens talk at the MIT List Visual Art Center, on May 16

Renzo Martens will do a talk at the MIT List Visual Art Center, on ‘The Institute for Human Activities’, on May 16. Martens will discuss his work in the context of the current exhibition ‘9 Artists’. The talk will be followed by a question-and-answer session with the artist.

Renzo Martens (b. 1973), who lives and works in Brussels and Kinshasa, is known for his satirical and disturbing video documentaries in which he travels to war-torn countries and places himself narcissistically at the center of the action, demonstrating how Western spectators consume distant trauma. For the List, he will present the work of the Institute for Human Activities, an organization he has founded dedicated to the transformation through artist-propelled gentrification of a former Unilever plantation 800 miles north of Kinshasa on the Congo River.

The talk will take place from 6:00-7:00pm. For more info, click here.

‘9 Artists’ is currently on view at MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge. For more info, see our previous blog post here.