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Paul Maheke

Paul Maheke, I Lost Track of the Swarm, installation view at the South London Gallery, 2016. Photo: Paul Maheke.

Paul Maheke was the fifth recipient of the South London Gallery Post-Graduate Residency from 2015 - 2016.

Paul Maheke was in residence at the SLG’s Outset Artists’ Flat for 6 months from November 2015 until May 2016, his exhibition I Lost Track of the Swarm was exhibited in the first floor galleries 13 Mar 2016 – 22 May 2016.

Maheke completed a programme of study at Open School East in 2015, after receiving an MA in Art Practice at l’École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy (FR) in 2011.

His practice is grounded in emancipatory and decolonial thought with an emphasis on cultural identities and new subjectivities. His current research focuses – through video, installation, sculpture and furtive interventions – on the body as both an archive and a territory, as a utopia to be reimagined through different strategies of resistance. With particular attention to dance, he proposes to defuse the power relations that shape Western imaginations and to rearticulate the representations that emerge from them.

Over the course of 2015 Maheke continued his research initiating a series of public conversations, at Open School East, entitled Beyond Beyoncé: Use It Like a Bumper!, which considered Hip-Hop cultures through the lens of Queer and Black Feminist theory. Other selected group exhibitions and residencies include;

Solo exhibition, Chisenhale Gallery, London, 2018; MOVE, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2018; Baltic Triennial XIII, Tallinn, 2018; Diaspora Pavillion, 57th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, 2017Ten Days Six Nights, Tate Modern, London, 2017Acqua Alta, Galerie Sultana, Paris, France, 2017; In Me Everything is Already Flowing, Room E-1028, Center, Berlin, Germany, 2017Green Ray Turns Out To Be Mauve, Green Ray, London (March 2016, solo show); performance at Guest Projects, London (April 2016), Ruptures, ABI, cur. Katy Orkisz, London (2015); artist-in-residence at Darling Foundry, Montreal, Canada (2015); ODRADEK, Les Instants Chavirés, cur. Mikaela Assolent + Flora Katz, Montreuil, France (2015); Re-former le monde visible, Le 116, cur. Marlène Rigler, Montreuil, France (2014); 59th Salon de Montrouge, Montrouge, France (2014); artist-in-residence at CIAP – Île de Vassivière, France (2014); Videoakt, French Institute, Barcelona, Spain (2013); VIVA!, at Centre CLARK, Montreal, Canada (2012); «Pratiques Furtives» : fragments d’une enquête, cur. Patrice Loubier, Skol art center, Montreal, Canada (2012).; Take the Weight, SixtyEight Art Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark (2017).