Exhibit: Adelita Husni Bey’s Agency

June 4—November 8, 2026

Contemporary Calgary: #701 11th Street SW, Calgary, AB, T2P 2C4

2014, Rome, Italy.

Thirty-five students at Manara High School took part in a workshop modelled on a group exercise, derived from a 1970s UK critical civic studies curriculum method. Led by Italian-Libyan artist Adelita Husni Bey, the students were divided into five constituencies – politicians, activists, bankers, journalists, and workers – and asked to engage with pressing issues in contemporary Italian politics, including unemployment, snap elections, and natural disasters.

Presented more than a decade after its completion, Husni Bey’s Agency (2014) is a documentation of this workshop, reflecting on the nature of power; the ways in which it manifests and operates; and how it may (or may not) be effectively used. Both disquieting and astute, the work resonates as urgently today as it did at the moment of its making, 12 years ago.