Prinz Gholam work in an area where culture and human existence meet, an area we all experience daily. The pure and precise movements of their performances stand as a relation between body posture and cultural posture and the multi-layered images developed from them.

The larger-than-life bronze statues – the black men and women – ancestors and role models of Maximilian’s are the starting point for Prinz Gholam’s investigation of the complex relationships to parents and history from the Hamlet fabric to the writings of Freud and Lacan.
The stage for the artists’ performances is formed in part by spectacular historical sites such as the Roman Agora at documenta 14 in Athens or the current Hofkirche in Innsbruck. These are tourist hot spots – supposedly places that have come to an end – that are recharged by the presence of the action.
Completely surprisingly, they lend the place an unexpected dimension, a tension that could have once been inherent in it.
Prinz Gholam’s work determines the space – no matter how steeped in history it may be – and does not negotiate re-enactment, but the production of pictures with references to painting, sculpture, film and everyday life, which redefine the place in their direct and powerful, intimate as well as artificial transience.

Franziska Weinberger

Booklet for the performance © Prinz Gholam