Studio Paul & Haiko, detail uit quilt. Foto Jostijn Ligtvoet
​DESIRE HAS NO HISTORY
STUDIO PAUL & HAIKO
​03.11 - 08.12.2024
03.11 4pm Opening
Opening by Joanne Mensert,
artistic leader Theater de Nieuwe Vorst in Tilburg.
14.11 7.30 Meet the artist
Artists Paul van de Waterlaat & Haiko Sleumer will give a personal tour where
there will be plenty of room to ask questions about the artworks on display.
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01.12 1.30-4pm Naaikrans
Feministische Handwerk Partij X Studio Paul & Haiko
(More information on this workshop can be found at events)
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08.12 4pm Finissage
Last day to meet with the artists
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'Desire has no history’ is a quote by iconic thinker Susan Sontag. The American writer and philosopher uses this quote to refer to the exlusive, timeless nature of desire, which cannot be pinned down to a specific time or place. In the exhibition Desire has no history, Studio Paul & Haiko explores the tension between desire, identity and history.
Performer and artist Paul van de Waterlaat and designer and curator Haiko Sleumer have been working together for several years, focusing on repairing and queering both personal and collective history. Unfulfilled desires from their own childhood and stereotyping around queer identity are the starting point in their work. In the exhibition Desire has no history, the duo shows how stigmas from the past cast their shadows over the present. Common clichés and archetypes faced by queers today stem from the way past medical science spoke about them - often in terms of abnormal, unnatural and disease.
In a world where expectations and prejudices limit or deny queers' dreams and desires, Studio Paul & Haiko literally puts the scissors to taboos and negative image-making. What was once fixed is cut open and old rules are revised. By making androgynous children's clothes for Paul's younger self and a quilt made from his mother's dresses, on the one hand Paul's personal history is repaired and rewritten. On the other hand, nineteenth-century stigmas surrounding homosexuality - extreme virility and physical characteristics such as long thin hands, enlarged penises and fussy behavior - are magnified in collages of imaginative queer monsters.
photo: Sebastiaan Rodenhuis
​​Short bio of the artist(s)
Paul van de Waterlaat (Helmond 1984) works as a performer and artist and is pursuing a master's degree in Gender and Queer Studies. He is co-founder of performance company Swarmers. Haiko Sleumer (‘s-Hertogenbosch 1993) is a designer and art historian. He is a curator of contemporary art at Museum W in Weert. In their work, Paul and Haiko focus on repairing and queering both personal and collective history. In doing so, they intertwine their art practice with their background in gender and art theory (www.paulhaiko.nl)