A Hard White Body: book presentation and performance

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31st, 2020
4:30 - 6:30 p.m.

Candice Lin, A Hard White Body, edited by Lotte Arndt and Yesomi Umolu, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2019.

Book presentation by Lotte Arndt and Lucas Morin
Performance: Paul Maheke, Taboo Durag

Following government announcements, the launch of Candice Lin’s book, A Hard White Body, originally planned as a face-to-face event, was proposed in an online format with Candice Lin, Paul Maheke, Lotte Arndt and Lucas Morin.

In text and images, the book Candice Lin: A Hard White Body gathers three exhibitions presented between 2017 and 2019 at Bétonsalon – Center for art and research (Paris), Portikus (Francfort-sur-le-Main), Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts (Chicago). In addition to an essay by curator Lotte Arndt that discusses the various iterations of Lin’s project, the publication features an essay by Rizvana Bradley; a conversation between Jih-Fei Cheng and Mel Y. Chen; and a conversation between the artist and C. Riley Snorton. These texts are accompanied by a visual essay by the artist and a selection of exhibition views.

A Hard White Body weaves together material and nonhuman histories alongside the life and work of three historical figures: American writer James Baldwin (1924–1987); French explorer and global traveler Jeanne Baret (1740–1807); and artist and naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717). Lin uses porcelain, a material whose history includes nineteenth-century imperial and scientific uses, to highlight fantasies surrounding whiteness and purity, only to subject her porcelain assemblages to pungent organic materials. She thus stages processes of contamination between organic and inorganic materials, creating an unstable sculptural ecosystem.

A Hard White Body composes a research made of multiple voices and bodies. For the book launch, Paul Maheke was invited to extend the conversations and exchanges, proposing a trail, the performance Taboo Durag. Thought as a danced stroll unfolding different narrative and choreographic registers, this piece will explore porous interfaces between vulnerability and resilience. Due to the health context, a rescheduled performance is planned.

+ + + +

Paul Maheke (b. 1985, Brive-la-Gaillarde, France) lives and works in London, UK. After studying at ENSA Paris-Cergy, Paris and Open School East, London, Paul Maheke’s works and performances have been shown at Tate Modern, London, the Venice Biennale, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Lafayette Anticipations, Paris, Baltic Triennial 13, Tallinn, Manifesta 12, Palermo and Chisenhale Gallery, London, amongst others. With a focus on dance and through a varied and often collaborative body of work comprising performance, installation, sound and video, Paul Maheke considers the potential of the body as an archive in order to examine how memory and identity are formed and constituted.

Lucas Morin (b. 1993, France) is a Paris-based contemporary art curator. Working primarily with research-based practices, his work highlights the tangible material vestiges and less-tangible emotional affects of queer desire, colonial histories, labor relations, and human-animal interactions. Morin most recently held the position of curator at Bétonsalon, Paris from 2016-19, and was previously curatorial assistant at the Sursock Museum, Beirut from 2014-15. At Bétonsalon - Center for Art and Research he curated three commissions with solo artists (Candice Lin: A Hard White Body, 2017, cur. with Lotte Arndt; Gaëlle Choisne: TEMPLE OF LOVE, 2018; and Jean-Charles de Quillacq: Ma système reproductive, 2019) and one group exhibition (Lateral Recovery Position, 2019, cur. with Guslagie Malanda). As an independent curator he has produced an exhibition and education program titled Emotional Labor at ENSA Bourges, 2019-2020, cur. with Sasha Pevak, including the exhibitions: Emotional Labor, La Box, 2019, and to Thomas, La Box & Ygrec, 2020.

Writer and curator Lotte Arndt (Paris, France) lectures at École supérieure d’art et design Valence Grenoble, and accompanies the work of artists who critically interrogate the postcolonial present and the blind spots of modernity. She co-curated Sammy Baloji: Extractive Landscapes (2019, with S. Rudolph) at Museumspavillon, Salzburg ; Candice Lin: A Hard White Body (2017, with Lucas Morin) at Bétonsalon, Paris, and Candice Lin: A Hard White Body, a Soft White Worm (2018, with Philippe Pirotte and Lucas Morin) at Portikus, Frankfurt/Main. With Malick Ndiaye, Marian Nur Goni and Emmanuelle Chérel she currently works on a project on (post-)ethnographic collections in different African and European museums (2019-2021), and with the artist’s collective On-Trade-Off on transnational artistic strategies to investigate lithium mining. Recent projects include: Summer Akademy Salzburg (July, 2019, with Sammy Baloji); L’intrus. Curatorial Intensive (with Natasha Marie Llorens, Tabakalera, Donostia, 2018) ; Tampered Emotions. Lust for Dust, Triangle France (2018); One Sentence Exhibition, Kadist (August 2018); and the research program The Vacation of the Museum. Decolonize Ethnographic Collections with Cinema (2016-2018). In 2016, she was Goethe fellow at Villa Vassilieff, Paris, and subsequently guest editor of the online magazine Qalqalah (2017). Her PhD is dedicated to postcolonial negotiations in Paris based cultural magazines related to Africa (2013). She is a member of the research group Global Art Prospective (INHA Paris), of the editorial committee of art center La Criée, Rennes; publishes on artistic strategies that aim to subvert eurocentric narratives and institutions, and co-organizes cultural programs, screenings and discussions in artistic and academic spaces. Her publications include Magazines Do Culture! Postcolonial Negotiations in Paris Based Periodicals Relating to Africa (in French), WVT, 2016; Crawling Doubles. Colonial Collecting and Affect (with Mathieu K. Abonnenc and Catalina Lozano), B42, 2016; Hunting & Collecting. Sammy Baloji (with Asger Taiaksev), MuZEE, Galerie Imane Farès, 2016.

Zoom screenshot, online conversation between Candice Lin, Paul Maheke, Lotte Arndt and Lucas Morin around Candice Lin, A Hard White Body, October 31th, 2020.