Adelita Husni Bey: Agency

Adelita Husni Bey is an artist and pedagogue whose practice draws on anarcho-collectivism, theater, and legal anthropology. She organizes workshops and produces artworks using non-competitive pedagogical models within the framework of contemporary art. Involving activists, architects, jurists, schoolchildren, poets, and educators, her work creates temporary sites for collective study and rehearsal. She represented Italy at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017) and has exhibited in New Photography, MoMA, New York (2018); The Eighth Climate, 11th Gwangju Biennale (2015); and Really Useful Knowledge, Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid (2014). A 2020-2022 Vera List Center Fellow, her research examined how pandemics reshape social relations. For Sharjah Biennial 16 (2025) she produced Like a Flood, a film installation on water extraction, infrastructural afterlives, and adaptability. She is currently developing a long-term research and performance project on Porto Marghera's petrochemical plant, toxic legacies, and citizen science and has recently undertaken a residency at Ocean Space, Venice.