SHIRIN NESHAT | Aida by Giuseppe Verdi | Opéra directed by Shirin Neshat | Opéra Bastille, Paris

The End of the World, the first exhibition by Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar at Le Patinoire Royale Bach, focuses on extractive industries and the global supply chains of critical minerals — the natural resources required for the tools and technologies essential to our daily life, from our phones to computers to electric cars. The exhibition centers on a single work The End of the World (2023-2024) composed of ten of the most precious minerals in the world: cobalt, rare earths, copper, tin, nickel, lithium, manganese, coltan, germanium, and platinum. As resource wars loom throughout the world, from the devastation of lithium mining in the Atacama desert in the artist’s native Chile to the explicit imperialism of US President Trump’s threats to annex Greenland and public negotiations around access to Ukraine’s natural resources, The End of the World brings the artist’s capacity to make us feel the injustice of the world to the capital of Europe.

• Le Patinoire Royale Bach, Brussels
• 4 settembre – 23 dicembre 2025

We are pleased to announce that on September 10, 2025, at the Teatro dal Verme in Milan, will take place a event of MITO SettembreMusica will take place: Dmitrij Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93, accompanied by the screening of the film “Oh to Believe in Another World” by William Kentridge. The performance will be given by the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester conducted by Michael Sanderling. This will be a unique opportunity to experience the dialogue between the power of symphonic music and the evocative imagery of Kentridge.

• Teatro Dal Verme
• 10 settembre 2025

The exhibition "Folding The Sea Into Dresses That Dissolve Like Salt" explores the rhythm of coexistence—of finding freedom while staying connected, of touch that transcends boundaries. Meaning is not anchored in fixed destinations but emerges through relationships, movements, and a shared pulse. Inspired by the compass metaphor in John Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” the exhibition describes a movement that expands outward while one foot remains firmly planted. In Donne’s poem, the compass symbolizes two lovers bound together despite physical distance, and here it similarly represents one side rooted while the other explores the world. It speaks of an experience seeking not direction but rhythm; like the invisible yet unbreakable bond between two lovers, the movement in the exhibition stays true to its center even as it stretches outward. This approach mirrors the island itself. Leros is at once solid ground and shifting rhythm. The island’s edges stretch with the sea, the wind, and memory, forming a fragmented yet interconnected narrative.

• Leros

On September 19, the National Museum of Art of Romania (MNAR) inaugurates the exhibition “Flying Carpets” by Thomas Ruff & Transylvania & Anatolia, curated by Erwin Kessler and open until February 28, 2026. The show brings together 15 Anatolian carpets from the 16th–18th centuries, preserved in the collections of MNAR in Bucharest and the Brukenthal Museum in Sibiu, alongside 15 contemporary carpets by Thomas Ruff from his d.o.pe series, inspired by Aldous Huxley’s The Gates of Perception. Ruff’s works, created through digital manipulation and fractal software, are printed on neutral fabrics with abstract, colorful patterns that suggest organic colonies, cosmic formations, and oriental decorative fantasies. The exhibition highlights the encounter between tradition and modernity, and between the local and the global, offering a reflection on the hybridity of the present.

• National Museum of Art of Romania, Bucharest
• 19 settembre 2025 – 26 febbraio 2026

We are pleased to announce Shirin Neshat’s return as director of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida for the 25/26 season stage of Opéra Bastille in Paris. The show, first performed at the Salzburg Festival in 2017, underwent a number of changes when it was revived in 2022 and will be presented in a further reworked version in September 2025 at the Paris Opera, making it a work of art that is constantly evolving, so that it continues to resonate with the contemporary world. How to choose between love for an enemy general and love for one’s homeland? Such is the dilemma faced by Aida, an Ethiopian princess enslaved in Egypt, who also has to contend with the rivalry of Amneris, the Pharaoh’s daughter, who loves the same man as her, Radames. Yet it is proud Amneris who begs the priests to pardon Radames after he unwittingly betrays a military secret. In this work, first performed in 1871 at the Cairo Opera, Giuseppe Verdi alternates epic scenes such as the famous triumphal march with more intimate arias such as “Celeste Aida”. While the context of the work’s creation owes much to the Egyptomania in vogue in the 19th century, the themes of Aida are as timeless as they are universal. This is reflected in the staging by Iranian visual artist Shirin Neshat, who, making her Paris Opera debut, emphasizes the cruelty of religious fanaticism, so swift to oppress women.

• Opéra Bastille
• 24 settembre – 4 novembre 2025

On September, 2025, the international festival of performance art, dance, music, and theater returns to L’Aquila with an edition dedicated to language, identity, and relationships. Among the highlights on Friday September 12, is Domenico Antonio Mancini’s performance, Il nostro zucchero quotidiano, taking place from 12:00 to 2:00 pm and from 5:00 to 7:00 pm. This itinerant action unfolds across the city on an ape – the iconic three-wheeled vehicle of Southern Italy’s street vendors – transformed into a poetic device. Instead of market calls, its loudspeaker will broadcast the words of Mahmoud Darwish, creating a new and unexpected urban soundscape. In the afternoon, starting at 5:00 pm, the performance will stop at the piazza of the Accademia di Belle Arti, inviting the public to share in a collective moment of listening and reflection.

• MAXXI L'Aquila
• 12 settembre 2025