Orphée 1990

Orphée 1990, by artist and curator Fareed Armaly, took place in 1990 at the Maison de la Culture et de la Communication (MCC) in Saint-Étienne, France. As his first individual institutional exhibition, it marked Armaly’s sustained engagement with European art institutions as formations reshaped by postwar, national, and post-’68 currents, and transforming through the post-1989 mix of subjectivities, shifting geopolitics, and globalization. Orphée 1990 focuses on the Maison de la Culture, a network of state cultural institutions conceived by André Malraux. Envisioned as a means to consolidate a fractious postwar national identity through sanctioned “high art,” the Maisons reflected the ambitions of Malraux’s musée imaginaire as “universal” humanism. The MCC in Saint-Étienne began construction before May ’68 and was completed afterward, standing on an ideological divide. Orphée 1990 is structured through passages along the historical fault lines inherent to this institution’s foundation, where ruptures and competing imaginaries destabilized the state's idealized notions of “nation,” “culture,” and “institution.” This publication, Orphée 1990 (2025), brings together comprehensive exhibition documentation alongside new contributions by Armaly and art historian Helmut Draxler, with reprints of a key text by the exhibition curator Yves Aupetitallot, and visual culture scholar Rebecca DeRoo. Orphée 1990 (2025) is the second in Armaly’s ongoing publishing series. The first title, The (re)Orient (2023), reflected on the epistemic violence of Orientalism through the new Grand Pyramid entrance of the Louvre—the museum that “occupies the subconscious of France” (Émile Biasini). Orphée 1990 engaged the Maison de la Culture as a state apparatus projecting a national cultural imaginary, and responded with a 1990 entry into the institution from Orphic acts of “looking back” and crossing thresholds. Second volume in an ongoing series on critical exhibition practices Contains previously unpublished documentation of a historically significant exhibition Features contributions from notable art historians and curators Examines important transitional moment in European cultural institutions Includes comprehensive visual documentation