Agency (2014), film still. High-definition video, 40’. Courtesy of the artist.
Adelita Husni Bey
Agency
June 4—November 8, 2026
2014, Rome, Italy.
Thirty-five students at Manara High School took part in a workshop modelled on a group exercise, derived from a 1970s UK critical civic studies curriculum method. Led by Italian-Libyan artist Adelita Husni Bey, the students were divided into five constituencies – politicians, activists, bankers, journalists, and workers – and asked to engage with pressing issues in contemporary Italian politics, including unemployment, snap elections, and natural disasters.
Presented more than a decade after its completion, Husni Bey’s Agency (2014) is a documentation of this workshop, reflecting on the nature of power; the ways in which it manifests and operates; and how it may (or may not) be effectively used. Both disquieting and astute, the work resonates as urgently today as it did at the moment of its making, 12 years ago.
Curated by Muriel N. Kahwagi.
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Photo by: Matteo Cattabriga
About the Artist
Adelita Husni Bey (she/her)
Adelita Husni Bey is an artist and pedagogue whose practice draws on anarcho-collectivism, theater, and legal anthropology. She organizes workshops and produces artworks using non-competitive pedagogical models within the framework of contemporary art. Involving activists, architects, jurists, schoolchildren, poets, and educators, her work creates temporary sites for collective study and rehearsal. She represented Italy at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017) and has exhibited in New Photography, MoMA, New York (2018); The Eighth Climate, 11th Gwangju Biennale (2015); and Really Useful Knowledge, Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid (2014). A 2020-2022 Vera List Center Fellow, her research examined how pandemics reshape social relations. For Sharjah Biennial 16 (2025) she produced Like a Flood, a film installation on water extraction, infrastructural afterlives, and adaptability. She is currently developing a long-term research and performance project on Porto Marghera's petrochemical plant, toxic legacies, and citizen science and has recently undertaken a residency at Ocean Space, Venice.
