Residencies

• 20.01 > 24.01.2025

Somewhere bet­ween the ritu­al, the apo­ca­lyp­se, and the car­ni­val, whe­re the fle­sh can devi­a­te and cor­rupt to chal­len­ge nar­ra­ted iden­ti­ty until it bursts and beco­mes unbearable.

FRANK, as in open, honest, direct, and short for Frankenstein, obser­ves that which the spea­king being has pla­ced not ​“in here” but ​“out the­re” on the other side of the bor­der. As the quest to dis­tort the fami­liar con­ti­nues, Cherish Menzo exa­mi­nes the mon­ster’s figu­re, its various rela­ti­ons to the idea of human­hood, and the hor­rors the­se rela­ti­ons entail. More so than (re)producing a phy­si­cal or visu­al port­rayal of the mon­ster, Cherish Menzo is inte­rested in how the mon­s­trous is a rei­fi­ca­ti­on and metap­ho­ric embo­di­ment of the beliefs and nar­ra­ti­ves that ter­ri­fy, hor­ri­fy, and yet also attract us.

Cherish resear­ches the pro­cess of brin­ging the pre-mon­ster sta­ge or hor­ror into a metap­ho­ric embo­di­ment and for that pro­cess to be the gene­ra­tor of ima­ge-making and the per­for­ma­ti­ve, sonic, and text mate­ri­al that plays with the ten­si­on of ambi­va­len­ce, uncan­ni­ness, enig­ma, uncer­tain­ty, and corruption.

In con­ti­nu­a­ti­on of JEZEBEL and DARKMATTER, in FRANK, dis­tor­ti­on will once again be one of the main ingre­dients to gene­ra­te mate­ri­al. In addi­ti­on, Cherish will look into the acti­on of decay and how some­thing gra­du­al­ly brea­king down and get­ting less or wor­se can be ano­ther attempt to dis­tort a form or information.

FRANK, will be the clo­sing of a tri­lo­gy.
A tri­lo­gy that does not con­sist of chro­no­lo­gi­cal sto­ry­tel­ling or a series of events, but may­be more a tri­fold of spa­ces, uni­ver­ses, fic­ti­ons, and con­ver­sa­ti­ons that regard Blackness, brin­ging the Black body to the cen­ter and attemp­ting to explo­re the African Diaspora’s mul­ti-inter­sec­ti­ons in recog­ni­za­ble, metap­ho­ri­cal, and abstract ways.