Adelita Husni Bey: Agency

Italian-Libyan artist Adelita Husni Bey presents Agency (2014), a 40-minute high-definition video documenting a role-playing workshop with thirty-five Rome high-school students cast as politicians, activists, bankers, journalists, and workers. Modelled on a 1970s British critical civic-studies method, the piece stages contemporary Italian politics as a makeshift society where power is rehearsed, contested, and constantly renegotiated. Curated by Muriel N. Kahwagi and shown in the Dome Theatre, it is a quietly unsettling meditation on how authority is produced and undone.