Saturday, November 4, 2023
7 – 8 pm
Admission free
We point out high volume and strong bass during the performance
Every year, the City of Düsseldorf awards a total of seven prizes to artists in the fields of fine arts, performing arts, music and literature. Since 1972, it has honored artists for outstanding artistic achievements and supported them in their further development.
In October and November 2023, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf will be showing two performative works by the 2020 grant winners: Nicholas Grafia and caner teker.
The painter and performance artist Nicholas Grafia was born in Angeles City in the Philippines in 1990. From 2016 to 2019, he studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf as a master student under Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. He has already presented his works internationally, for example in the USA, Great Britain, France, Denmark and Poland.
caner teker is a survivor, choreographer and artist. teker's performances encompass parasitic, transformative and autobiographical world-making. Manipulating space, time and body, images are created that go beyond queerness and post-migrant identity to include personal experiences.
caner teker (* 1994 in Duisburg) studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 2013 to 2019 as a master student and subsequently at the SNDO – School for New Dance Development, Amsterdam. teker's performances have so far been shown at the Westfälischer Kunstverein, Gessnerallee Zurich, Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin, tanzhaus nrw, Düsseldorf and HAU – Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, among others. In 2021, teker showed the performance untitled at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf as part of the exhibition Journey Through A Body. In 2022 teker was a danceWEB fellow and performed at the Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, the Maxim-Gorki-Theater, the Tanzquartier Wien and Radikal Jung at the Munich Volkstheater. caner teker worked as a resident of the Kunststiftung NRW in Galatasaray Istanbul in 2023 and is an ars viva award winner in 2024.
On November 3 and 4, caner teker shows the performance grounds for refusal at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, which invites into a space for collective mourning. In the field of tension between performativity and authenticity, hierarchies are broken down, regimes of gaze are shattered, and representational politics are overcome. Wrapped in live music with atmospheric narratives by Nazanin Noori, we ask ourselves which bodies are considered worth living and which are worth lamenting.
Supported by tanzhaus nrw and Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus