MEHDI-GEORGES LAHLOU (BELGIUM)
AND ARIANNE FOKS (FRANCE)
08.10.13 @ 8PM | $10 requested donation

Both FOKS and LAHLOU create performance works that are fearless, provocative and sometimes playful but always have, at their heart, depth and insight into culture, gender, and society.Two powerhouses from Europe share their own work and collaborate on a new piece for this performance art exhibition at DEFIBRILLATOR.

MEHDI-GEORGES LAHLOU is an enfant terrible. Tackling the idea of masculinity within Muslim and European cultures, Lahlou tests limits – both cultural and physical. His performances are very athletic, embracing physical endurance, to arrive at work that is fresh, clever, fearless, and provocative.

ARIANNE FOKS is a bad-ass. Her work is both confrontational and seductive. Her work investigates identity and displacement, focusing on the question of desire. Foks often incorporates written words in her performances, concise text spelled out with everything from fluorescent tape to lipstick kisses. Her work adapts to the context and the space. She creates a response to what she sees and hears – what she loves or what she hates. Attitude and radiant energy are her materials. Open and abstract invitations for the viewer to participate create deliciously uncomfortable moments wrapped in sex-appeal and intellectual integrity.

Arianne Foks is a multidisciplinary artist. Her primary medium is Performance Art, but she also creates installations, drawings, and photography. Adapting her work to the space, her process is site specific. Comprised of words, colors, rhythm, architecture, partners, pop-culture, folklore, and personal mythology. In an unknown city she often takes walks without a destination – collecting images, local habits, and folklore to integrate into her work as a way of shaping her own identity. Her work revolves around identity, and how our physical reality can be shaped in different ways. She questions desire and how desire produces a new body. She defines it through creation of personal mythologies. She transforms herself into a horse or a frog, or she writes out words with kisses – sharing with the audience a particular moment.

Mehdi-Georges Lahlou (French-Moroccan) was born in 1983 in Les Sables d’Olonne, France. He now lives and works in Brussels and Paris. Lahlou makes performances and installations that deal with cultural identities and gender. Lahlou grew up in a mixed religious environment (one parent Muslim and the other Christian), so he experienced a multicultural and multiform society on a daily basis. This is reflected in his work with humor and intelligence.

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Tags: ARIANNE FOKS, BELGIUM, Chicago, dfb, Dfbrl8r, FRANCE, JOSEPH RAVENS, MEHDI-GEORGES LAHLOU, Noble Square, performance art, Wicker Park