Paul Maheke, "Portrait of a Ghost XIV", 2022.
Courtesy of the artist, Sultana Paris and Goodman Gallery |
AS THE DAYS MOVE INTO NIGHTS
PAUL MAHEKE 09.8 - 10.22 Curator: Chloé Grondeau With a focus on decolonial ideas, Congolese-born French artist Paul Maheke uses a variety of media to explore the body as a site of memory, archive, and identity construction. His familiars, presented for the first time in Canada – including older works and new pieces produced during an in situ residency – are placed in dialogue in As The Days Move Into Nights at Diagonale. Here, Maheke devotes himself to bodies, installations, sound works, and alternative paths of thought to propose zones of resistance and conversations around crossings, transitions, and transmissions. Drawings and texts excerpted from his personal journal, referring to a traumatic personal event, are deployed on body-sized coloured surfaces. Visitors thus become engaged in his emancipatory process of self-portraiture, which tends to dissolve individual experience in order to foster collective empowerment. In the series titled Portrait of a Ghost, Maheke evokes the ghost as a cathartic figure that suggests transition from one state to another. In the two works shown here, it takes on the features, successively of a night owl – the folkloric symbol of the messenger – and a monster whose mouth is surrounded with colour. The fragmented work Reflections and Unresolved Shadows is composed of a sound piece and a drawing of the artist lying down, his head turned. The first component evokes Maheke’s emphasis on giving voice and material to those who are made invisible. The second component emits sounds that impact the flesh and bones of visitors, establishing a form of touch without physical contact. This bodily state reflects the cosmology of ancient Congo. The drumming is a way of connecting collectively to ancestors through the vibrations that they release, becoming a tool for transferring nonverbal information. “The Equinox is just behind me. An emotional release that feels tidal.” (1) Texts, astrology, and fabric intertwine in As Saturn and Jupiter Conjunct. Maheke’s private thoughts resonate with the stars, enabling him to escape the rationality of Western thought, indicating his commitment to alternative and minoritized discourses. This work, comprising words appended to a permeable medium, invites us to think about the world as a whole within which human and non-human are connected and there is no longer a hierarchy between nature and culture. Two-person and solo performances of The Origin Of Death will take place during the exhibition, extending the conversation on the embodiment of the collective as a form of transmission. -- (1) Text excertp from the work As Saturn and Jupiter Conjunct 
DIAGONALE X CICA
ARTIST TALK Paul Maheke “Pull out/ Se retirer” 16 September 2022, 6:00pm EST VA-114 (Concordia) and on Zoom Looking back on selected projects, Paul Maheke focuses on the ways in which the invisible and the visible interact inside his artistic practice. This event is presented in collaboration with CICA. Paul Maheke's exhibition, “As the Days Move Into Nights,” is on view at Diagonale until October 22, 2022. Paul will attend via zoom. Snacks served on site. Photo Credit: Paul Maheke, A fire circle for a public hearing (2022), a High Line Performance, New York City. Photo by Liz Ligon. Courtesy the High Line
RESIDENCY
PAUL MAHEKE August 2022 Paul Maheke was in residence during the month of August. After studying at ENSA Paris-Cergy, Paris and Open School East, London, Paul Maheke’s works and performances have been shown at Tate Modern, London, the Venice Biennale, Centre Pompidou, Palais de Tokyo and Lafayette Anticipations in Paris, Baltic Triennial 13, Manifesta 12, Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich and Chisenhale Gallery, London, amongst others. In 2021, he was shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize and included in British Art Show 9. With a focus on dance and through a varied and often collaborative body of work comprising performance, installation, sound and video, Maheke considers the potential of the body as an archive in order to examine how memory and identity are formed and constituted.
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