The Vera List Center was founded in 1992 in direct response to the pressing debates of the day on freedom of speech, identity politics, and public support of the arts. In this exhibition, we carve out five themes that continue to shape everything we do—democracy, knowledge, identity, ecology, and care. In an expansive timeline, each area will be illuminated through archival and documentary material, tracking whether and how these debates and topics have shifted and evolved. As we identify common threads, we subject our own history to a self-critical course correction and challenge both archival and curatorial practices.

No Vera List Center program exists without art: Art and artists provide the radical, joyous, and forward-looking entry points to new understandings of these topics and inclusive political empowerment. Moroccan French artist and 2011–2013 VLC Fellow Bouchra Khalili returns to the VLC for this exhibition and presents her seminal project The Speeches Series for the first time in New York in its entirety. Consisting of three videos—Mother Tongue, Words on the Streets, and Living Labor—the installation examines the experiences of migrants in three cities, Paris, Genoa, and New York City, through the act of performing political speeches and texts.

Khalili’s installation is accompanied with an interactive library space for New School students and faculty that celebrates and assembles the work of VLC Fellows, the VLC Fellows Library. At least one publication by each of the forty-four fellows who the Center has hosted over its thirty-year history appears on these shelves. Inside some of the books, you will find dedications to the future reader—reflections and notes by the fellows about a particular publication, the research, and their time at the Vera List Center. 

Bouchra Khalili was born in Casablanca, Morocco in 1975. She lives and works in Berlin. She graduated in Film & Media Studies at Sorbonne Nouvelle and Visual Arts at the Ecole Nationale d’Arts de Paris-Cergy. Encompassing film, video, installation, photography, printmaking, and publishing, Khalili’s practice explores imperial and colonial continuums as epitomized by contemporary instances of illegal migration and the politics of memory of anti-colonial struggles and international solidarity. Khalili’s work has been subject to many international solo exhibitions, including at Bildmuseet, Umea (2021); Oslo Kunstforening and Fotogalleriet, Oslo (2020); the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2019); Jeu de Paume, Paris (2018); Secession, Vienna (2018); CAAC, Sevilla (2017); Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus (2017); MoMA, New York (2016); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2015); MACBA, Barcelona (2015); PAMM, Miami (2013). Her work was also included in collective international manifestations such as the 2nd Lahore Biennial (2020); the 12th Bamako Biennial (2019); BienalSur, Buenos Aires (2019); Documenta 14, Athens (2017); the 55th Venice Biennale (2013); the 10th Sharjah Biennial (2011). A nominee of the Guggenheim’s Hugo Boss Prize (2018) and the Artes Mundi Prize (2018), she was also the recipient of Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute Fellowship (2017-2018), Ibsen Award (2017), Abraaj Art Prize (2014), Sam Art Prize (2013), daad Artists-in-Berlin (2012), and Vera List Center for Art and Politics Fellowship, New York (2011-2013). She is a Professor of Contemporary Art at The Oslo National Art Academy, and a founding member of La Cinémathèque de Tanger, an artist-run non-profit organization.

Visiting The New School:
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