12.2.2025

Very welcome to a public screening and talk in English, featuring the two artists currently exhibiting at Kohta and moderated by Kohta’s Director and Curator Anders Kreuger.

Zhang Xu Zhan (Taiwan, 1988, lives in Taipei) will discuss his recent work. His exhibition at Kohta is an adaptation of his two-channel video installation Termite Feeding Show, 2024, a ‘cabaret’ with actors in termite costume enacting ‘culinary dances’ based on a news story of termites chewing on electric cables in Taiwan’s mountain towns.

During the talk two earlier works by Zhang Xu will be screened:

Compound Eyes of Tropical, 2020–22, single channel video, 16′

The film integrates popular narratives of different origins, with inspiration from the South-East Asian folktale The Mousedeer Crosses the River and the costumes of performers in traditional Taiwanese festivals.

The main character of this stop-motion animation is a half-mousedeer, half-fox shaman puppet dancer. He switches back and forth between human and animal, using his wit to fool the crocodiles in the river in his attempt to reach the other side.

This is a variation on the general narrative principles and strategies of folktales. The mirror, symbolising identity, is used as a lead metaphor. Like the fractured perspective of a fly’s compound eyes, the film allows viewers to weave in and out of narratives from different countries and cultures.

So Si Mi, 2018, single channel video, 5’12”

The line between life and death is deeply imprinted in my childhood. I have a vivid memory of sunny days, a bucket of water almost full and a half-submerged mouse in a cage struggling for its freedom until it became exhausted and surrendered to inevitable death.

The music used in this work is the German folk song Ach, wie ist’s möglich dann (‘Oh, how is it possible then’). In Taiwanese folk culture this song was often performed at funerals – an interesting and absurd contrast to its use in a German romantic film from 1935. I have choreographed a dance performance about death with this song as my soundtrack.

Oscar Eriksson Furunes (Norway, 1991, lives in Stjørdal and Malmö) has attracted attention in the Nordic scene with his sculptural, photography-based and research-driven practice. One of his recurrent themes is the fear of persecution that the LGBTI community has had to live under throughout modern history – and that is still very much a reality in many parts of the world. The concrete historical references in his work are often to do with the codes used by repressed groups to protect and develop their own community.

Eriksson Furunes’s exhibition at Kohta is a new version of the installation night watch, 2023, consisting of 52 perfume lamps shaped like owls. Such lamps were used in gay bars in the Netherlands in the mid-20th century. They would be lit as a warning signal, alerting patrons to the presence of strangers or the police.

During the talk two earlier works will also be discussed:

light blue, 2023, installation, 21’16”

Shattered glass, sound equipment, slowed-down version of the Soviet-era song for a children’s choir Letite, goluby (“Fly, doves”), composed by M. L. Matusovsky for the 1951 film My za mir (‘We Are for Peace’). The first lines from the song, Letite, goluby, letite (“fly, doves, fly”) were used to warn gay men about a coming police or KGB raid. Goluboy is Russian for “light blue”, related to golub (“dove”) but also used as a code word for homosexual men.

red, 2023, 40 reliefs in cast polyester, pigments, steel

Fragments from a photographic documentary series taken from the opening night of the women’s dance club Labyrinth at Café Floor in 1986 by Gon Buurman, with permission from the IHLIA LGBTI Archive in Amsterdam.