PARENTHOOD AND OTHER QUESTIONS QUITTING SMOKING

« Structured around sculpture and performance, Mike Bourscheid’s artistic practice, which often involves the creation of appendixes and unkind prosthesis, combines singular characters and their indecisive sexuality with rude humor to explore his Luxembourg origins and probe the absurdities of normative masculinity and patriarchal power. […] The approach of the artist consists in appropriating the various competences that are necessary to the accomplishment of his work. […] This approach is a key element of his practice as it gives him a means to question and foil the stereotypes of masculine or feminine work (a division of tasks that he could observe very quickly thanks to his parents : his mother was a dressmaker and his father was a welder). »*

The artworks selected for Art au Centre #6 also highlight these gender issues with a fluid vision of masculinity where emphasis is given to tenderness, softness and vulnerability. The image of the body is at the heart of these identity and ontological questionings. Like puppets, extensions of himself or someone else, the gloves with silky hair – carefully hand-stitched by the artist – refer to this will to deconstruct the normative injunctions and to feel the perception of oneself and the world. In Quitting Smoking, the eyes and the noses are made of handmade glass pearls. Positioning oneself as to whisper in someone’s ear, it is possible for two people to share a cigarette. The smoke will be forever inlayed into the fabric due to its smell and the fading.

* KWAN, Vanessa and PHILLIPS, Kimberly, Writing through melancholy. To someplace else, in Unwilling (a Companion), Haverford, Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, 2018, p. 24 (translation : Patrick Kremer).