KESSWASTUDIO@GMAIL.COM
BIOGRAPHY
ARTIST STATEMENT
CV
SELECTED WORK
MUSIC/MERCH
KESSWASTUDIO@GMAIL.COM
BIOGRAPHY
ARTIST STATEMENT
CV
SELECTED WORK
MUSIC/MERCH
Bourse de Commerce Paris, France
On the occasion of Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit, the Pinault Collection presents a series of musical encounters that foreground the central role of sound and performance in Mike Kelley’s expansive practice. Kelley—an artist whose work spanned sculpture, installation, performance, and music—drew deeply from subcultural sound worlds, from proto-punk and noise to free jazz and ritualistic sonic assemblages, treating audio as a vehicle for social and psychological activation. (Pinault Collection)
This live performance by KESSWA unfolds as a richly textured, immersive sonic event. Her set at the Bourse de Commerce, titled Simulation, integrates her layered voice, polyrhythmic texture, and atmospheric synthesizers that gradually oscillate between introspective chant and communal resonance, evoking both trance-like immersion and critical reflection.
Situated within the vast rotunda and galleries of the Bourse de Commerce, this performance situates KESSWA’s exploratory sound practice in direct dialogue with Kelly’s notion of minor histories and the liminal spaces of memory, ritual, and cultural influence that permeate the Ghost and Spirit retrospective. It activates the exhibition’s architectural and curatorial framing as an embodied encounter, bridging Kelley’s own musical curiosities with contemporary sound practices that extend his legacy of interdisciplinary experimentation.
The evening continues with the Sun Ra Arkestra, whose ecstatic, cosmic jazz traditions resonate with Kelley’s own transformative experiences and artistic cosmologies, reaffirming music’s enduring role as a site of collective imagining and artistic transmission.