Taboo Durag, Paul Maheke (2021) (EMPIRE LINES x Mostyn, Glasgow International)
EMPIRE LINES13 Juni 2024

Taboo Durag, Paul Maheke (2021) (EMPIRE LINES x Mostyn, Glasgow International)

Contemporary and performance artist Paul Maheke moves between France, Congo, and Canada, exploring the ‘archive of their body’ through drawing and dance, via Taboo Durag (2021).

To Be Blindly Hopeful emerged from the very last sentence of a journal that Paul Maheke kept between August 2020 and June 2021, capturing the turbulence of the COVID pandemic on paper. Central to his practice is a delicate dance between the individual and the collective, personal and broader sociopolitical contexts, echoing the sentiment expressed by bell hooks, who reminds us that ‘the space of our lack is also the space of possibility.’

Currently based in France, Paul shares work ‘staged’ in previous exhibitions at South London Gallery, Chisenhale Gallery, and Tate Modern, highlighting how these ‘new’ drawings, prints, book illustrations, and paintings of birds have long formed part of his practice. He explains how performance and dance can be both emancipatory and trapping, with respect to queerness, masculinity, and gender, and the reality of being ‘brown body looked at by a white audience’. Exploring these lived experiences through movement, Paul’s work suggests of Stuart Hall’s thinking about living archives - but the artist also shares his lifelong admiration for the French-born ice skater, Surya Bonaly.

We delve into Paul’s plural popular culture and academic Influences like Grace Jones and Félix González-Torres, Audre Lorde and Édouard Glissant, and Bruce Nauman to Paul B. Preciado - not as icons but real, complex people. Finally, Paul highlights how his work changes in its global travels, from Paris, to the Baltic Triennale in Estonia, and Johanneburg, South Africa. He also speaks of his collaborations with family members and the fellow artist Melika Ngombe Kolongo (Nkisi) for the Congo Biennale in 2021, his personal relationship with arts institutions on the continent, as a diasporic artist.

Paul Maheke: To Be Blindly Hopeful runs at Mostyn in Wales until 29 June 2024. It includes Taboo Durag (2021), produced as a performance to camera for Glasgow International 2021. This episode marks this iteration of Scotland’s biennale festival of contemporary art, which continues until 23 June 2024.

Paul has also shown work as part of the Diaspora Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019, the first to feature an official performance programme co-produced with the Delfina Foundation, and in the Drawing Biennal 2024, which runs at the Drawing Room in London until 3 July 2024.


Hear another of Paul’s collaborators, Barby Asante, on Declaration of Independence (2023), part of Art on the Underground in London: pod.link/1533637675/episode/aa2803b68933ab974ca584cf6a18479c


For another exhibition from Mostyn, hear artist and curator Taloi Havini on Habitat (2017) and Artes Mundi 10: pod.link/1533637675/episode/e30bd079e3b389a1d7e68f5e2937a797


For more about bell hooks, hear Professor Paul Gilroy, on The Black Atlantic (1993-Now): pod.link/1533637675/episode/90a9fc4efeef69e879b7b77e79659f3f


And on Édouard Glissant, listen to Manthia Diawara, co-curator of The Trembling Museum at the Hunterian in Glasgow, and artist Billy Gerard Frank on Palimpsest: Tales Spun From Sea And Memories (2019), part of PEACE FREQUENCIES 2023: instagram.com/p/C0mAnSuodAZ


PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.


Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast

And Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936

Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

Avsnitt(162)

Learning from Artemisia, Uriel Orlow and Orchestre Jeunes Étoiles des Astres (2019-2020) (EMPIRE LINES x Eden Project)

Learning from Artemisia, Uriel Orlow and Orchestre Jeunes Étoiles des Astres (2019-2020) (EMPIRE LINES x Eden Project)

Curators Hannah Hooks and Misha Curson connect global environments and food practices, from guerrilla gardeners in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to foragers in Palestine, challenging extractive, c...

11 Jan 202416min

White Zombie, Victor Halperin (1932) (EMPIRE LINES x Visions of Haiti, Barbican Cinema)

White Zombie, Victor Halperin (1932) (EMPIRE LINES x Visions of Haiti, Barbican Cinema)

Curator Matthew Barrington marks 220 years since the Haitian Revolution, the only successful slave uprising, unreeling how resistance continues with a series of films, from the first zombie horrors, t...

5 Jan 202417min

The Black Triangle, Armet Francis (1969) (EMPIRE LINES x Autograph)

The Black Triangle, Armet Francis (1969) (EMPIRE LINES x Autograph)

Photographer Armet Francis documents African diasporic cultures across ‘The Black Triangle’, and captures the co-founding of the Association of Black Photographers in London, now Autograph ABP, 35 yea...

28 Dec 202315min

Whites Can Dance Too, Kalaf Epalanga, translated by Daniel Hahn (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Kizomba Design Museum, Africa Writes 2023 at the British Library)

Whites Can Dance Too, Kalaf Epalanga, translated by Daniel Hahn (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Kizomba Design Museum, Africa Writes 2023 at the British Library)

Writer and musician Kalaf Epalanga moves between Angola, Portugal, and Brazil, sounding out colonial histories and contemporary migrant experiences through kizomba and kuduro music, in Whites Can Danc...

21 Dec 202315min

Where Worlds Meet, Maha Ahmed (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Leighton House)

Where Worlds Meet, Maha Ahmed (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Leighton House)

Contemporary artist Maha Ahmed reconnects Asian art forms along the Silk Road, migrating between traditional Mughal and Persian miniature paintings, Japanese woodblock prints, and imported Islamic cer...

14 Dec 202315min

Arcadia, John Akomfrah (2023) (EMPIRE LINES at 100 x The Box, Sharjah Biennial 15)

Arcadia, John Akomfrah (2023) (EMPIRE LINES at 100 x The Box, Sharjah Biennial 15)

For EMPIRE LINES’ 100th episode, we join artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah to journey the Columbian Exchange, connecting continents from the 15th century, and contemporary port cities from Plymouth t...

7 Dec 202313min

Africa Series, Carrie Mae Weems (1993) (EMPIRE LINES x Kunstmuseum Basel)

Africa Series, Carrie Mae Weems (1993) (EMPIRE LINES x Kunstmuseum Basel)

Curator Alice Wilke transports from Switzerland to sub-Saharan cities in Africa, tracing Carnival traditions across continents, via Carrie Mae Weems’ 20th century wallpapers, ceramic plates, and photo...

30 Nov 202313min

Did You Come Here To Find History?, Nusra Latif Qureshi (2009) (EMPIRE LINES x MK Gallery, The Box)

Did You Come Here To Find History?, Nusra Latif Qureshi (2009) (EMPIRE LINES x MK Gallery, The Box)

Curator Hammad Nasar expands ideas of miniature painting, moving around South Asia and Western Europe from the 17th century to now, with Nusra Latif Qureshi’s 2009 digital print scroll, Did You Come H...

23 Nov 202322min

Populärt inom Samhälle & Kultur

en-mork-historia
podme-dokumentar
gynning-berg
p3-dokumentar
aftonbladet-krim
mardromsgasten
nemo-moter-en-van
skaringer-nessvold
badfluence
killradet
creepypodden-med-jack-werner
hor-har
spar
flashback-forever
kod-katastrof
vad-blir-det-for-mord
aftonbladet-daily
historiska-brott
rss-sanning-konsekvens
rattsfallen