Theatre of cruelty

Raw intensity surges through the body, opening it up to primal instincts; the body spasms, convulses and escapes from its function and organs, leaving traces of its dark choreography; the mind loses itself, forms itself into madness and sculpts into the raw truth; language collapses, gestures carve meaning beyond words; the absurdity of repetition moulds into a trance that will never conclude; the avatar, the actor, the double do not mimic, but surpass reality; painting exposes raw wounds – its dense black gloom fading into sublimity; birth and death are replayed as absurd mechanical rituals; machines transform into cruel operators – they command rather than serve; totems made of blood and mourning rupture into weapons of sacred ritual magic; time becomes bizarre and elastic; all systems collapse; all egos shatter; there is no catharsis – cruelty and tragedy are not final – they reproduce, mutate, devour themselves to birth again in a relentless spiral.

Curated by Agnes Gryczkowska, the exhibition Theatre of cruelty is rooted in, and takes its name from French artist Antonin Artaud’s (1896-1948) radical vision of experimental theatre. Formulated in the 1930s, Artaud’s theatre sought not to present polite fictions but to spiritually cleanse its audience by bypassing reason in favour of the body, the senses, and the extremes of emotion – like an exorcism or an ancient rite. For Artaud, “cruelty” was never mere shocking bloodshed, but a merciless intensity – a demand to confront existence in its rawness, its suffering, its ecstasy, and its mortal edge. In a world where pain is aestheticised and suffering is consumed as content, his call to tear aside the curtain and expose what lies behind is more urgent than ever.

Bringing this vision into the present, the exhibition gathers artists across generations and disciplines whose practices are rooted in Artaud’s radical legacy. Through theatre, performance, sound, painting, sculpture, video, and installation, the works by Ed Atkins, Angélique Aubrit & Ludovic Beillard, Tobias Bradford, Romeo Castellucci, Pan Daijing, Tadeusz Kantor, Liza Lacroix, and Michel Nedjar enter into dialogue with Antonin Artaud’s diaries and rarely seen drawings. The works on display refuse narrative comfort; they are unsettling and disturbing, embodying existential melancholy, ruptured language, the force of gesture, and the primal energy Antonin Artaud envisioned.