Paul Maheke

Lives and works in Montpellier, France

Artist statement

My practice emphasises light and fluid forms. Once focused on fleeting gestures of appearance in public spaces, it has now evolved into installation, drawing, painting, video, and performance. This exploration is rooted in decolonial and emancipatory thought, questioning identity and memory through the lens of representational history. By engaging with movement, text, and images, my work imagines the body as an archive to be reinvented, a territory with its own cartography. I am interested in what shapes collective imaginaries and how archetypes defining our relationship with otherness are constructed. Moving between post-colonial and feminist studies, cosmology, and esotericism, this work explores alternative spaces of thought. Through this investigation, which operates at the intersection of multiple disciplines, I seek to challenge our relationship with the concept of universality more broadly. My exhibitions are poetic yet political environments where human and non-human bodies become points of resilience, establishing a dialogue between different worlds. The relationship between the collective and the individual is central to these environments. The installations are often bathed in coloured light and sonic waves. I conceive of the exhibition space as a place of welcome—for my body, the visitors, and the practices of other artists. I collaborate regularly with musicians, sound artists, performers, and thinkers, multiplying the voices through which my work exists....

Artwork