Prinz Gholam – My heart is a poised cithara

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.