Archive of Desire

As part of the public program of Julie Mehretu's exhibition "Ensemble", Palazzo Grassi presents the Italian premiere of the performance Archive of Desire, produced by VisionIntoArt. Archive of Desire was commissioned by the Onassis Foundation as part of “Archive of Desire”, a festival inspired by the poet C. P. Cavafy, and premiered at National Sawdust in New York City on May 3 and 4, 2023. 

Archive of Desire features Julie Mehretu together with Robin Coste Lewis, Vijay Iyer, Jeffrey Zeigler in a multidisciplinary project combining music, poetry and visual art. The performance, originally directed by Charlotte Brathwaite, draws inspiration from Cavafy’s archive, processing the sonic, visual, and cultural tones found in his poetry through recitation, live music, electronics, and new visual work.

About C. P. Cavafy

Constantine P. Cavafy was born in Alexandria in 1863 to Greek parents from Constantinople, and inhabited a fluid cross-cultural existence that strongly influenced his writing. Cavafy spent most of his life in Alexandria, where he lived in a neighbourhood of intersecting walks of life — and his work mirrors the vibrancy and tensions of the worlds mingling outside his door. 

Cavafy’s poetry is marked by a pervasive sense of liminality: his language can be idiosyncratic, playful, modern to the point of being called by some “prosaic,” yet also nostalgic. Similarly, his poetry often references Greek history and mythology, yet he is a monumental figure of modernism, and his works offer viewpoints that transcend their time and resonate today. Cavafy's poetry was a safe haven for him to explore his queerness — sometimes explicitly, sometimes in more coded language. 

About The Cavafy Archive 

C. P. Cavafy collected and archived his work on a systematic basis, hence creating a unique literary and personal archive. The Cavafy Archive consists of manuscripts of poems, hand-compiled printed editions, prose literary works, articles, studies, notes by the poet and more. The Cavafy Archive was acquired by the Onassis Foundation at the end of 2012. This acquisition safeguarded the archive’s continued presence in Greece, and prevented a potential fragmentation. The Onassis Foundation’s mission is to render the archive accessible to all, and to promote Cavafy’s work and the international character of his poetry. After digitising and documenting the entity of the archive, the Onassis Foundation published in 2019, in Greek and in English, the digital collection of the Cavafy Archive, inviting everyone with a passion for Cavafy to discover all the above. In addition, the Onassis Foundation inaugurated on November 2023 a new space in the heart of Athens to permanently accommodate the archive and C. P. Cavafy’s library, and celebrate his legacy, while also supporting the restoration of the poet’s house in Alexandria.