Artists Paul Maheke
Venue ROOM E-10 27 @ Center, Berlin
Photography Frank Sperling
Hydrofeminism – which is an exploration of our biological commonality and its roots in water – is part of a set of texts and studies that have formed the basis of his research for this exhibition. He was particularly struck by on-going research that claims that memory can exist in water and that psychological trauma might be transmitted from generation to generation via our DNA. One such study, carried out by Masaru Emoto and Luc Montagnier (Nobel Prize laureate for the discovery of HIV), discovered water’s molecular responsiveness to emotions.
As such, Maheke treats water as both a subjective and affective substance that choreographs relations between bodies and subjects. He further explores notions such as fluidity and formlessness through the use of dance as both a strategy of resistance and a thinking process; one that is in flux and allows for indetermination. The exhibition speculates on embodied histories and the exploration of physical memory through movement. It is ultimately grounded in an artistic exploration of queer blackness that encompasses dance and music making. These have become coping mechanisms through which the queer black body operates as an archive, using its fluids as pathways to knowledge and its transmission.
