Artist: Marijke De Roover
Exhibition title: Cum as Your Madness
Venue: KIOSK, Ghent, Belgium
Date: February 9 – March 17, 2024
Photography: ©Marijke De Roover / All images copyright and courtesy of the artist and KIOSK, Ghent
Note: Exhibition’s documents are available here
With her solo exhibition in the main space of KIOSK, Marijke De Roover invites visitors to an extreme immersive horror experience: a cinematic, theatrical, and physically and psychologically intense performance that engages them through interaction, evocative themes, and larger-than-life narrative tactics.
Cum as Your Madness is a psychedelic, sadomasochistic, decomposed narrative of feminist self-actualization against a macho hegemony, improvised around unlikely pop cultural references.
The exhibition takes the form of a folky, (semi-)pornographic haunted house that is accessible at specific moments, upon reservation, to groups of a maximum of five persons. The ensuing performances, in which these viewers will participate, will be filmed and the footage used to create a new multichannel video installation as an amendment to De Roover’s movie Cum as Your Madness, presented in 2023 at Centre Pompidou and investigating correlations between patriarchy, sexism, and the religious fanaticism that fired historical witch hunts.
With this project at KIOSK, Marijke De Roover aims to explore BDSM as a ritual and as religious theater: “Rituals are complex events, involving multiple persons with varying expectations, a variety of acts in which various people participate with various levels of intentionality and commitment and so much more. BDSM is not just an example but a paradigm of ritual because this theatrical act consciously and intentionally toys with and makes use of frightening scenes to open up another world through the intense exchange of powers and relationships. In this way, BDSM can contribute to the process of transgressing and transcending stereotyped gender roles, developing trust and negotiation skills, and rehearsing vulnerability through both control and submission.”
About Marijke De Roover
Marijke De Roover (1990, BE) is a part-time professional karaoke singer and meme connoisseur, yet currently known mostly for her queer/feminist performance work. She lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. Her work has been shown at, among others venues: Centre Pompidou, Paris (FR), EMST, Athens (GR), Museum fur Neue Kunst, Freiburg (DE), Museum de Pont, Tilburg (NL), MUHKA, Antwerp (BE), Garage Rotterdam (NL), Point Ephemere, Paris (FR), UNTITLED, Moscow (RU), BOZAR, Brussels (BE), Extra City, Antwerp (BE), Mu.ZEE, Ostend (BE), ARCADE, London (UK), ISELP, Brussels (BE), Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt am Main (DE), Beursschouwburg, Brussels (BE).
