Naeem Mohaiemen and Vincent Meessen in Conversation
Director’s Dialogue on Art and Social Change
Moderated by Pranav Jani
Join artists Vincent Meessen and Naeem Mohaiemen for an engaging conversation about politics, memory, and justice on film.
Free for all audiences with ticket
Film/Video Theater
During the program, Meessen and Mohaiemen will delve into the ideas and questions driving their innovative filmmaking. Mohaiemen’s new three-channel film Through a Mirror, Darkly—on view at the Wex this spring as part of his exhibition Corinthians—revisits the charged political landscape of 1970s America. A Missing Can of Film, which he completed in 2025 and is screening here on March 24, explores disputed history in Bangladesh. Meessen’s Just a Movement (2021), is a dynamic reinterpretation of Jean-Luc Godard’s La Chinoise (1967), which screens at the Wex on March 5 and 11. Meessen’s documentary, which tells the story of anti-colonialist artist and organizer Omar Blondin Diop, will screen at the Wex on March 25.
Together, Meessen’s and Mohaiemen's films probe urgent themes, setting the stage for a timely and thought-provoking conversation on how artists bring critical social issues into focus through contemporary cinema.
This year’s Director's Dialogue is moderated by Ohio State Associate Professor of English Pranav Jani.
IMAGE CAPTION
Naeem Mohaiemen, Through a Mirror, Darkly, 2025, at Albany House, London. © Naeem Mohaiemen. Courtesy of Artangel. Photograph: Thierry Bal for Artangel.
More about the Director's Dialogue
Since 2006, the center’s Director's Dialogues have explored social justice, identity politics, climate change, and health care, among other issues, with such leading cultural and academic figures as Hanif Abdurraqib, Camae Ayewa (Moor Mother), Chinonye Chukwu, Anaïs Duplan, Hope Ginsburg, Ann Hamilton, Wil Haygood, Cameron Granger, Kerry James Marshall, Paul D. Miller (aka DJ Spooky), Jason Moran, Cadine Navarro, Anna Deavere Smith, Lynne Tillman, and Patricia Williams.