Kupferstich-Kabinett: Prinz Gholam

Prinz Gholam

Working across disciplines, the artistic duo Prinz Gholam has conceived the performance titled The Survivor and the Dreamer specially for the Kleiner Schlosshof. Two performances will take place. In the intervening period, the paper masks used in the performance, which are inspired by works from the Kupferstich Kabinett collection among other things and which represent key elements of the action, are on show in the Kleiner Schlosshof.

Michel Gholam, born in Beirut in 1963, and Wolfgang Prinz, born in Leutkirch im Allgäu in 1969, have worked together since 2001. Latest since their participation in the documenta 14, they have counted as among the most highly regarded performance artists internationally. Their work encompasses drawings, photographs and videos, too. The core of Prinz Gholam’s artistic practice is the clash between the individual and socially coded gestures and conventions – including those found at the performance venue.

For The Survivor and the Dreamer, Prinz Gholam took inspiration from Tennessee Williams’ 1953 stage play Camino Real about the fate of the protagonist in the surreal and hostile environment of a strange city. The impulses for the performance do not come from the plot itself, but rather from the play’s structure: from the setting, a gloomy square at the end of the street, located between luxury hotels and sleazy doss-houses, and from the integration of well-known literary figures into the story’s characters, so that the drawn masks primarily depict persons that Prinz Gholam has appropriated from art-historical pictures. The performance’s title is a reference to two secondary characters in the play.

In 2020/21, Wolfgang Prinz and Michel Gholam were artists in residence at the Villa Massimo. For this reason, the artistic duo could also be experienced this summer in the Rome Prize winners’ exhibition Eppur si muove – und sie bewegt sich doch in the Japanisches Palais. Following Monika Grzymala’s installation in 2020 and that of Katharina Hinsberg in 2021, the performance by Prinz Gholam represents the third show by as part of the series of artistic interventions put on in the Kleiner Schlosshof that runs until 2025.

Program

Currently no dates

The performances of Prinz Gholam and the installation of the masks in Kleiner Schlosshof (Small Palace Courtyard) are sponsored by the Stiftung Kunst und Musik für Dresden (Art and Music Foundation for Dresden) and the Freunde des Kupferstich-Kabinetts e.V. (Friends of the Museum of Prints and Drawings).