L’esprit de notre temps, Villa Torlonia, Rome, March 2021

“Our work is not nostalgic; through our work, what we strive to bring back into the light is what we could define as the impossibility to build a bridge with the past.”

- Prinz Gholam

Prinz Gholam is an artist duo consisting of Wolfgang Prinz and Michel Gholam. They have been developing a performance practice for the past two decades based on using the body to reinterpret a highly varied assortment of cultural references ranging from old master paintings and sculptures to contemporary art, films and images from

the media. Their work, which they often produce in such historically significant venues as museums, archaeological sites and public areas, hints at and reveals the ways in which our existence is influenced by processes of cultural assimilation.

Similitude, Punta della Dogana, Venice, Italy, October 13 and 14, 2018

My Heart is a Poised Cithara, 2020 (extract, 17 min.). Performance at Palazzo Altemps, Rome, October 28 and 31, 2020 apart of Hidden Histories (localesproject.org), curated by Sara Alberani and Valerio Del Baglivo in collaboration with Villa Massimo, Rome.

My Sweet Country (Olympieion), 2017, HD Video, with sound, 35 min., video still

“All we have seen, all we have memorised and internalised is transformed through the living human presence, through gestures, timing, and sound.”

- Prinz Gholam

Speaking of Pictures, drawing for display of Nelly’s, Athlete at Delphi Festival in the pose of the discusthrower, 1930, 2017

pencil and adhesive mounting corners on paper, 42 x 29.7 cm, unique

My Sweet Country, 2017, performance, exhibition views: documenta 14, Temple of the Olympian Zeus-Olympieion, Athens, Greece, 2017

During their performance for documenta 14, Prinz Gholam embark on a method of embedding corporeal constellations which they internalize from paintings, sculptures, and historical photographs, on both the sites of the Temple of Olympian Zeus & Ancient Agora / Odeon of Agrippa. Their performance My Sweet Country withdraws its sources from Delacroix, Michel Butor’s text on Delacroix, Nelly’s pictorial language, and Wilhelm von Plüschow’s ambivalent arcadian codes to name just a few.