We took a sip from the devil’s cup

We took a sip from the devil’s cup is Paul Maheke’s first solo exhibition in Ireland. It rounds out Project’s annual programme and brings us into 2023, inviting questions about futurity through a more sensual, spectral and affective mode.

“Cosmology and communication between different worlds are recurrent subjects of Paul Maheke’s work in which the artist attempts to move beyond Western modes of knowledge production. Ghosts and other non-human messenger figures carry narratives that often address questions of erasure and permeability in the construction of identity instead of relying on representation as a tool. Paul Maheke’s newly commissioned work consists of a series of seven drawings bleached into fabric, accompanied by glass lamps, hand-blown at Atelier Gamil (France)…The otherworldly faces in the drawings are loosely based on a tasseography session, a divinatory reading of patterns in coffee sediment, reflecting the artist’s long-term interest in the esoteric and its relation to non-Western forms of knowledge production. Reading through images and storytelling, rather than representation, are of central importance to the artist.” – Rado Istok (The Spectral Forest, an exhibition at Nida Art Colony)


Extract from the exhibition presentation, Project Arts Centre, Dublin, Ireland