Theatre of Cruelty

Theatre of Cruelty is a group exhibition on view from November 15, 2025 to February 8, 2026, and brings Antonin Artaud’s radical legacy into dialogue with the contemporary practices of Ed Atkins, Angélique Aubrit & Ludovic Beillard, Tobias Bradford, Romeo Castellucci, Pan Daijing, Tadeusz Kantor, Liza Lacroix, and Michel Nedjar.
 
Curated by Agnes Gryczkowska, at the invitation of Casino Luxembourg—Forum d’art contemporain.

“Raw intensity surges through the body, opening it up to primal instincts; the body spasms, convulses and escapes from its function and organs, leaving traces of its dark choreography; the mind loses itself, forms itself into madness and sculpts into the raw truth; language collapses, gestures carve meaning beyond words; the absurdity of repetition moulds into a trance that will never conclude; the avatar, the actor, the double do not mimic, but surpass reality; painting exposes raw wounds—its dense black gloom fading into sublimity; birth and death are replayed as absurd mechanical rituals; machines transform into cruel operators–they command rather than serve; totems made of blood and mourning rupture into weapons of sacred ritual magic; time becomes bizarre and elastic; all systems collapse; all egos shatter; there is no catharsis—cruelty and tragedy are not final–they reproduce, mutate, devour themselves to birth again in a relentless spiral.” –Agnes Gryczkowska

Theatre of Cruelty is rooted in, and takes its name from French artist Antonin Artaud’s (1896–1948) radical vision of experimental theatre. Formulated in the 1930s, Artaud’s theatre sought not to present polite fictions but to spiritually cleanse its audience by bypassing reason in favour of the body, the senses, and the extremes of emotion—like an exorcism or an ancient rite. For Artaud, “cruelty” was never mere shocking bloodshed, but a merciless intensity—a demand to confront existence in its rawness, its suffering, its ecstasy, and its mortal edge. In a world where pain is aestheticised and suffering is consumed as content, his call to tear aside the curtain and expose what lies behind is more urgent than ever.

Bringing this vision into the present, the exhibition gathers artists across generations and disciplines whose practices are rooted in Artaud’s radical legacy. Through theatre, performance, sound, painting, sculpture, video, and installation, the works by Ed Atkins, Angélique Aubrit & Ludovic Beillard, Tobias Bradford, Romeo Castellucci, Pan Daijing, Tadeusz Kantor, Liza Lacroix, and Michel Nedjar enter into dialogue with Antonin Artaud’s diaries and rarely seen drawings. The works on display refuse narrative comfort; they are unsettling and disturbing, embodying existential melancholy, ruptured language, the force of gesture, and the primal energy Antonin Artaud envisioned.

This exhibition situates Antonin Artaud as both origin and living presence—the forefather of performance art and a prophet of the crises of modernity. It shows rarely seen drawings made during his time at the asylum in Rodez, France, in the mid-1940s: L’Homme et sa douleur (1946), La Révolte des anges sortis des limbes (1946), and Le Totem (1945–6), alongside his diaries.

The entire exhibition space is enveloped in heavy black curtain, echoing Artaud’s insistence that theatre must be staged in the round, breaking the division between actor and spectator. There is no fixed stage here, no frontal view. The visitor walks inside an almost enclosed chamber where the play is everywhere and nowhere. To enter is to step between curtains, to inhabit the coulisses de l’être—the backstage of being—a space where masks drop and the theatre of cruelty unfolds.

Here, the visitor is not audience but participant, absorbed into the ritual, surrounded by traces, voices, theatrical machines, totems, and spectres.

Agnes Gryczkowska is a curator, art historian, writer, and musician based in London. Gryczkowska focuses on creating Gesamtkunstwerk-like exhibitions that stage dialogues between contemporary and historical narratives through a distinctly dark, interdisciplinary lens. Most recently, she curated the exhibition Au-delà (2023) at Lafayette Anticipations, Paris, which featured works by Alicia Adamerovich, Korakrit Arunanondchai & Alex Gvojic, Ivana Bašić, Hildegard von Bingen, Bianca Bondi, Romeo Castellucci, Matthew Angelo Harrison, Eva Hesse, Janina Kraupe-Świderska, Wifredo Lam, Michèle Lamy, Tau Lewis, Kat Lyons, Kali Malone, Ana Mendieta, Christelle Oyiri, Tobias Spichtig, TARWUK, Jeanne Vicerial, Anna Zemánková, as well as Cycladic idols and a Punic stele.

Gryczkowska has authored a number of exhibition texts, contributed to various contemporary art publications, including BLAU International, Spike, and KALEIDOSCOPE, and participated in panel discussions, including Art Basel Paris+ Conversations in 2023. She was a visiting lecturer and student mentor at the Royal Danish Academy and BPA// Berlin programme for artists.

Theatre of Cruelty | Casino Luxembourg

Lenders
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
Musée Cantini, Marseille
Christian Berst Art Brut, Paris
Cabinet, Londres
By Romeo Castellucci / Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio
Cricoteka—Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor, Cracovie
Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris
Tadeusz Kantor Foundation, Varsovie
Private collections