Pleasing the Spirits at Musée Barbier-Mueller
Pleasing the Spirits
October 29, 2025 — May 31, 2026
Inaugurating a new exhibition cycle, Pleasing the Spirits showcases the Barbier-Mueller Collection. With artist Paul Maheke invited to design the museum's new scenography, the aim is to tell a moving story in space, based on objects from this exceptional collection, which contains several thousand works. In a unique staging, playing in particular with volumes and spaces, light and shadow, pauses and accumulations, the objects in the Barbier-Mueller Collection come alive with a breath of fresh air and open up to new narratives. Masks, figurines, spears, and ritual objects are reinterpreted to reveal their symbolic power and ceremonial aura in a different light, in order to construct and dance together, reinvented cosmogonies.
The exhibition is divided into several sections corresponding to the different rooms of the museum. It stages the objects as characters in a narrative, interacting with one another. In this imaginary play, the spirits of the place, those inhabiting the objects, those of the museum, those of the forefathers and ancestors, engage in a conversation across time and space. The objects are grouped according to visual, symbolic, or thematic criteria and presented from a transcultural perspective.
Paul Maheke (1985, Brive-la-Gaillarde) has developed a multifaceted artistic practice that combines performance, drawing, video, sound, and dance. His work questions the way in which bodies, narratives, and presences appear or elude representation. Shifting the norms of the visible with his works, Paul Maheke summons spectral figures, poetic voices, and immaterial elements to open up other forms of perception. Each project creates a fluid space, permeated with esoteric, spiritual, and sometimes mystical references. The artist thus constructs a body of work in which the intimate is linked to the collective, and bodies compose new narratives. He is a resident at the Villa Medici in Rome for the 2025-2026 academic year. He has presented his work in institutions such as the Tate Modern (London), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the High Line (New York), and the Fondazione Pomodoro (Milan).
