Paul Maheke rehearses A fire circle for a public hearing before US debut on the High Line this week (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Who: Paul Maheke, Morgan “Emme” Bryant, Lucy Hollier, Rafaelle Kennibol-Cox
What: High Line Art live performance
Where: The High Line at Fourteenth St.
When: June 28-30, free (advance RSVP recommended), 7:00
Why: “My work is always in reaction or in response to a certain space, a certain context,” multidisciplinary French artist Paul Maheke said in a 2018 discussion about his installation A fire circle for a public hearing at Chisenhale Gallery in London. “Often in my exhibitions, there is this notion of welcoming people in the space, whether they are collaborators or members of the audience.” Maheke is reimagining A fire circle for a public hearing for its US debut, taking place in the Fourteenth St. tunnel passage on the High Line June 28-30 at 7:00. He will be joined by dancers Morgan “Emme” Bryant and Rafaelle Kennibol-Cox and trombonist Lucy Hollier. The piece combines music, movement, and spoken word as Maheke explores marginalization, hypervisibility, erasure, and identity.
Paul Maheke’s A fire circle for a public hearing premiered at Chisenhale Gallery in London in 2018 (photo by Mark Blower)
“Paul’s work asks important questions about what it means to be a body onstage, and how a single person is able to hold many shared and overlapping histories in a single gesture. He encourages us to think about what is seen and what is not seen, both in the performance of a single person, but also in our wider cultures and histories at large,” High Line Art associate curator Melanie Kress said in a statement. Judging from a rehearsal I saw a few days ago, this is a powerful work with a lot to say about where we are at this moment in history.