Already during his studies at the École des Beaux-Arts in Cergy (School of Fine Arts) (2007–2011), Paul Maheke was experimenting with painting and pigments sprayed onto canvas or silk. Later, he began printing textiles (often white) to use them as flags and banners (Les étendards, swaying bodies, 2009). These works existed both in public space and within the gallery. In 2015, for the exhibition Odradek at Les Instants Chavirés (Montreuil), he collaborated with the artist Maxime Bichon on a printed tablecloth (Ask for Trouble, 2015).

It was for his first solo exhibition at the South London Gallery in London, I Lost Track of the Swarm, in 2016, that Paul Maheke produced his first curtains. Visually, these works bridge the textile pieces of Cuban-American artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957–1996) and the graphic experiments of American artist Lawrence Weiner (1942–2021): they both mark interstices, affect the light, and make words float.

Since 2016, Paul Maheke’s exhibitions have almost systematically included curtains. Initially used as surfaces for text and as a means to soften the harshness of exhibition spaces, they have also served as projection screens and fragile partitions within which the artist has performed. At first diaphanous, coloured, and plain, they later became opaque canvases treated with bleach or various pigments (such as tea).

Le langage des ombres, 2017-2024 (2025), presents, for the first time, a collection of nine series of curtains spanning eight years of Paul Maheke’s artistic production. Installed in chronological order, their layering allows a glimpse into the consistency of the artist’s aesthetic vocabulary, while also revealing its variations. While the texts speak of bodily fluidity, the desire for community, and potential for healing, the figures and faces that emerge attempt to capture ghosts – as if invoking spirits.

The dancefloor could never be a story with one voice. The dancefloor is packed with stories all pulsating with their own experiences and needs, 2017
The River Asked for a Kiss (to Pateh Sabally), 2017
A fire circle for a public hearing, 2018
Feeling the Tides Within the Fluids of My Body, 2019
ooloï (OlOi), 2019
OOLOI, 2019
Letter to a Barn Owl, 2018
As Saturn and Jupiter Conjunct, 2021
Vert Pétri d’Eau, 2024