Curated by Christine Van Assche

Twenty-one years have passed since Mona Hatoum’s first major museum show at the Centre Pompidou. By 1994, she already had nearly two decades of work behind her but was just beginning to gain international prominence. Hatoum has cut a curious path through the intervening decades, from the muscular look of her oversize kitchen utensils to the fragility of her sculptures in glass and textiles. This summer, the Pompidou is reconstructing the full arc of Hatoum’s oeuvre. With seventy-five pieces dating from the 1970s through 2014 and a catalogue anthologizing key writings on her work, the show is poised to untangle what Hatoum has described as “the string of metaphors” she’s been working on all along. Travels to Tate Modern, London, Feb. 24–June 12, 2016; Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Sept. 30, 2016–Jan. 30, 2017.

— Kaelen Wilson-Goldie

Curated by André Magnin

This expansive and ambitious show will survey a century of modern and contemporary art in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Drawing upon the region’s rich legacy of painting, it will feature works by familiar names from the 1920s such as Albert Lubaki and Djilatendo; by Bela Sara and Pili Pili Mulongoy, members of the midcentury workshop Atelier du Hangar; and by post-’80s international stars Chéri Samba, Moke, and Chéri Cherin. While these will mingle with virtuosic street portraits by Kinshasa photographer Jean Depara, fantastic sculptural models by Bodys Isek Kingelez and Rigobert Nimi, and performances scheduled throughout the exhibition’s run, whether the show will do more than reiterate the already-prevalent notion that Congo art has been and is still dominated by so-called “popular” painting remains to be seen.

— Chika Okeke-Agulu