Requiem for an Entourage

We are a team of four master's students at IESA International in Paris, studying in the MBA in Cultural & Arts Management and MBA in Contemporary Art: Sales, Display & Collecting programs. To prepare for our future careers in the arts field, we are organizing an exhibition for our graduation project titled Requiem for an Entourage, which will take place from October 29th through November 1st. We are in the process of finalizing the planning stage of the project and are hoping to raise the necessary funds to allow us to progress to the next phases and the eventual realisation of the event. Our exhibition is focused on the theme of alienation, which you can read more about below:

The feeling of being alienated is something that is bound to arrive at many people's doors throughout life. However, more recently it has become a more feeling and topic of conversation emerging from the pandemic. People have started to question, through art, what it means to feel alienated, and how one can feel connected to a space/oneself? How does one begin to feel at home in a space? and how does one attempt to achieve this and is it possible? Requiem for an Entourage attempts to pinpoint this in a way that draws on a social and cultural space, the exhibition takes artists' works and creates a diaologue and conversation around connectivity.

Alienation is defined as a withdrawal or separation of a person or a person's affections from an object or position of former attachment when one becomes isolated. It translates into two terms, estrangement and externalisation, and can further be described as powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness, isolation, and self-estrangement. The concept of alienation was drawn from Marx’s Economic and Political Manuscript (1844), it later was coined as a term in the 20th century through the social theories and criticisms of George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel believed that alienation is part of the process of self-creativity and self-discovery and is essential in the realisation of self or freedom. The concept of ‘alienation’ was further solidified by classical and sociological works by Marx, Durkheim, Tonnies, Weber, and Simmel in the 19th and 20th century works. In order for alienation to occur, there will be a subject and an object, for example, one is alienated from the self due to some subjective experiences and objective conditions. These conditions and experiences vary depending on the human, thus manifesting themselves in different types of alienation including Cultural Estrangement (feeling removal from established values), Isolation (having a sense of loneliness or exclusion, such as being a minority in a group), Meaninglessness (being unable to see meaning in actions, relationships or world affairs, or having a sense that life has no purpose), Normlessness, Powerlessness and Self-Estrangement (being out of touch with yourself in different ways, mostly being unable to form your own identity).

Our project seeks to explore the concept of alienation within different types of spaces, whether this is socially or culturally, and how, as humans, we attempt to feel a sense of connectivity and togetherness once again. This is where the title Requiem for An Entourage comes from, directly translating to ‘a remembrance/longing for togetherness’. Requiem, stemming from this need to feel a sense of belonging again, and relating to memories of what once was whether this is on a personal level, relating to cultural background, or on a social level. The artists explore the idea of memories within the context of feeling whole and a part of something larger, rather than being an independent entity and alienated from these memories.

Requiem for an Entourage includes the work of five artists from different backgrounds, culturally, socially, and artistically.

We hope to raise funds to cover the expenses involved with running our exhibition, including artist payments, venue costs, and all other expenses that come along with planning and executing a multi-day event. You can find more information on our project, including dates, locations, and updates on our website and our Instagram page.

We thank you in advance for helping us fund our project and for believing in our vision.