Levant

In his video installation Levant, Maheke stages a poetic meditation on visibility and erasure.

A video performance made in collaboration with the dancer and choreographer Ligia Lewis (born 1983) and the musician Nkisi (Melika Ngombe Kolongo) (born 1985) is projected onto a gauze fabric screen. Lewis repeats a sequence of movements to a pulsating electronic soundtrack, her form blurred. As the field of view shifts and phases, the figures of Maheke and Nkisi also briefly join Lewis in movement. Dressed in black, the three performers appear and disappear, hazy and ghostlike, against the background of a dark and indistinct space.

Through this interplay of visual and sonic distortion, Maheke builds an atmosphere which is at once dreamlike and menacing.


Extract from the cartel notice for the group show Sublevel : Politics of Lights, Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom