Prinz Gholam: My heart is a poised cithara

Since 2001 Prinz Gholam have been developing a multidisciplinary approach to their work, which encompasses performance, video, photography and drawing.

Their work is centred around a study of the human body in relation to surrounding cultural constructs and the world in which we live. It consists of choreographic or visual arrangements in which Prinz Gholam use and reinterpret a range of images and postures taken from historical paintings and sculptures, and from films and media sources. In this way Prinz Gholam draws attention to the political and social dimensions of the human body, as seen through the history of its representation.

In residence at the Villa Massimo in Rome in 2020, Prinz Gholam began work centred around the idea of masks as a means of metamorphosis.In the context of the pandemic, the mask obviously assumes a particular significance for artists. It is thus seen as a means of protection but also of transgression. Used in funerals, rituals, in the theatre, or for dancing, the mask is omnipresent in our history. It suggests a ritualised persona, as well as the dramatised characters of the Commedia dell’Arte, or the uninhibited carnival figure. As such the mask reveals more than it conceals.

For this first exhibition in a French institution, Prinz Gholam unveil a collection of new works which, given the context of the Chateau de Rochechouart and the frescoes it contains, take on a particularly distinctive dimension.

“My heart is a poised cithara,” a phrase adapted from a song lyric by Pierre-Jean de Béranger (1780–1857) and used as an epigraph by Edgar Allan Poe for his short story “The Fall of the House of Usher,” allows Prinz Gholam to underline the essential connection between emotional and physical states

Rochechouart Museum is run by Haute-Vienne Council and is an officially recognized French museum receiving funding from the French Ministry of Culture and Communication.