The Decameron Retold

Gallery Hours

M–F: 10 am–6 pm; Sa&Su: 10 am–5 pm

Adad Hannah’s The Decameron Retold (2019) is a new work commissioned by the Richmond Art Gallery based on the fourteenth-century literary work The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio. The medieval collection of novellas comprises one hundred tales told over ten days by ten young women and men sequestered in a villa outside of Florence to escape the black plague.

For the exhibition, Hannah has created a series of video tableaux vivants using Boccaccio’s frame narrative as the departure point. Working with community members in front of and behind the camera and incorporating local stories gathered through an open call, the artist invited participants to lay their own stories over The Decameron’s structure. This new narrative expands Hannah’s typical improvisational approach to production and community engagement.

Hannah is well known for his photographic and video works that explore the performative and cinematic potential of tableaux vivants. He has produced community-based projects around the world, from Senegal to Australia to the United States, as well as across Canada. This is his first large-scale community project in the Lower Mainland.

This project is generously supported by Canada Council for the Arts New Chapter program