A fire circle for a public hearing

Maheke explores the tension between hypervisibility and erasure. Incorporating installation, video, sound and performance, the exhibition at Vleeshal altered and adapted throughout its duration. Curtains resembling back-stage theatre sets were installed across the gallery and functioned as both props for performances and as a way of delineating space, while floating planets outline a speculative cosmology of interconnected worlds. A sound work, composed in collaboration with artist Sophie Mallett, played on a loop and acted as a companion to a silent video depicting Maheke’s dancing body - present and persistent, but not always fully visible.

Every weekend, performers delivered a series of choreographies throughout the duration of the exhibition. Combining spoken word, movement and dance, the performers embodied different characters, such as the ghost, the drag king and the oracle. The performances repositioned fragments of art history and popular culture, working from pre-existing texts, images, music, performance and film. Felix Gonzalez Torres’ performance, “Untitled” (Go-Go Dancing Platform) (1991), was for example reformatted and repeated, alongside gestures sampled from Michael Jackson’s 1992 Dangerous World Tour rehearsals.


Extract from the exhibition presentation, Vleeshal Center for Contemporary Art, Middelburg, Netherlands