“Hijra,” the title of Younès Rahmoun’s most recent exhibition, refers to the departure, in the year 622, of the Prophet Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Yathrib, the pre-Islamic name of Medina. Hijra—the word means “migration” in Arabic—is an act of faith, an act that looks toward the future. “I think that traveling is a true gift,” the artist said in an interview with curator Jérôme Sans, “whether it is an inner journey or a journey toward the other.” Rahmoun draws strongly on the traditions of Islam in his work, particularly Sufi philosophy. However, it is not only the presence

Though the title “Elsa Sahal des origins à nos jours” (Elsa Sahal from the Origins to Today) suggests a historical survey, the fifteen large-scale ceramic sculptures on view in Sahal’s recent exhibition were all made this year. Featuring an installation of primordial-looking sculptures arranged on a dark, sand-dusted platform, the show evoked origins of a different sort. In addition to providing a telluric mise-en-scène, the curvaceous room——filling stage represented the artist’s latest experiment with how to display sculpture. Having previously skewered headless humanoid forms on

Michele Spanghero’s Vol., 2018, is a minimalist sound installation created with a technique that the experimental composer Alvin Lucier developed. In I am sitting in a room, 1969, which has served as an inspiration to Spanghero, Lucier’s voice states from the outset the work’s rigorous protocol: The artist records his own voice in a space, then plays it back in that same space and rerecords it, repeating the process “again and again,” until the words become an indistinguishable amalgam of sound and, to a ghostly effect, end up being nothing more than frequencies of resonance. Edward Strickland