Liberté - Albert Serra

Floral landscapes

The exhibition is a disorienting total experience that brings together elements from theater and film. Your imagination is heightened in a set reminiscent of a mix of colourful landscapes by rococo painters Jean-Honoré Fragonard and François Boucher and a contemporary cruising zone. Between the large projected scenes from Liberté, Serra lets you participate in a game of seeing and being seen, in search of the naked meaning of 'ultimate freedom'.

The exhibition marks a new chapter in Serra's adaptation of his play Liberté. In Liberté, you witness a group of French aristocrats who, having fled from the conservative court of Louis XV, seek out Prussian companions to share their libertine ideals of freedom à la Marquis de Sade somewhere in a forest clearing.

As the moon rises, the freethinkers scatter through the forest in search of sexual encounters, blurring the boundaries between social positions and bodies. Between the bushes or in the tight spaces of their carriages, the characters play a game of revealing and concealing, peeking and touching.

About Albert Serra

Albert Serra (1975, Banyoles, Spain) made ten full-length films, short films, video installations and theatre productions.

Liberté received the Un Certain Regard - Special Jury Prize of the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. The same year, Serra adapted images from Liberté into the two-channel installation entitled Personalien, which was shown in Reina Sofia.