Free entry
Ventoselaan 1, Eindhoven
23 January t/m 8 February
Opening on Friday 23 January at 19.00
Finissage on Sunday 8 February
Every Saturday and Sunday 14.00 – 19.00
On February 8th the finissage of the second exhibition in our renovated building at Ventoselaan 1 will take place. Half Strings Half Tongue is a solo exhibition by Qiao Chu Guo.
During the opening, you can watch the performance Yokhor by Natalia Papaeva at 19.30.
Programme Finissage:
16.00 Performance van Qiao Chu Guo
16.20 Artist talk Amal Alhaag & Qiao Chu Guo
17.15 Performance van Toni Brell & Toni Steffens
Finissage
16.00 Performance Qiao Chu Guo
The performance draws on the broader historical context of the installation, rooted in 17th-century Dutch colonial history in Indonesia. A Dutch missionary observed an enslaved woman with epilepsy who got cured through moxibustion. He documented and reframed this event within the framework of European medicine.
In the performance, the artist wears a glass mask and encounters the epileptic woman. They are positioned as if delivering a speech: the body performs the gesture of speaking, yet the voice never fully emerges, collapsing back into the throat.
16.20 Artist Talk Amal Alhaag & Qiao Chu Guo
Amal Alhaag is an Amsterdam-based curator, researcher and co-founder of several initiatives, including Metro54, a platform for experimental sonic, dialogic and visual culture and the Side Room: a room for eccentric practices and people together with artist Maria Guggenbichler (2013-2016). Alhaag develops ongoing experimental and collaborative research practice, public programs and projects on global spatial politics, archives, colonialism, counter-culture, oral histories and popular culture.
17.15 Performance Can’t hold a thrum without spilling it door Toni Brell & Toni Steffens
Can’t hold a thrum without spilling it moves between forceful eruptions and fragile whispers. The performers play hand-shaped ceramic instruments and objects with their whole bodies. Sound is carried through water, breath, and trembling gestures that culminate in a screaming concert. The work reveals sound as unstable and emotional, bound to body and place – at once fragile and overwhelming. The instruments extend the performers’ vulnerability into the shared space of listening, where moments of intensity and release become collective experiences.
PROLOGUE
I will tell you a story—a story that begins when I open my mouth. Wind flows through my throat, vibrating the air. A blasting voice reaches you in a foreign tone, then dissipates mid-air, leaving no echo, no reply. Speech falls into noise; stories collapse into murmurs, hums, and whispers.In the long and quiet history of displaced bodies and misrecognised souls, I move where I must, and speak words that betray me.
This exhibition unfolds through three intertwined lies: a lie of happiness, a lie of science, and a lie of honour. Each operates through the body, each promises meaning, progress, or virtue, and each leaves behind a residue that cannot be spoken.
EXHIBITION
Qiao Chu Guo’s solo exhibition combines recent work—drawings, installation, and video—into three main projects. Qiao researches the idea of lost and altered voices by acting as a protagonist within abandoned or intentionally replaced narratives. Each exhibition room becomes a distinct scene populated by ghostly bodies, redacting the knowledge being transferred and opening a space for a language that cannot be accessed through words or authority.
The body is used as a catalyst. Through a process of mapping, internal bodily mechanisms are traced onto external social systems. As a multidisciplinary artist with performance pra
Text by Qidi Feng
Title design by Areum Hwang
ABOUT QIAO CHU GUO
Qiao Chu Guo (they/them; born in Jingmen, China, and based in the Netherlands) is interested in the body as a living archive of established social structures. Their work plays with the autonomy of hacking, defeating, disrupting and restoring. They work across installations, drawings, video and performance, exploring the extension and transformation of the body.
