📍 KOW, Berlin
📅 September 11 – November 1, 2025
Opening: September 11, 6:00 PM
KOW presents Whether the Weather, the first solo exhibition in Berlin by Ivorian-American artist Monsieur Zohore. Transforming the gallery into a climatic space, the exhibition immerses visitors in both a physical and cultural atmosphere.
Four oscillating fans—named Wirbelsturm Marianne, Susanne, Sabine, and Hildegard—greet visitors by tilting their heads, their motor hums and airflow making the audience part of the exhibition. Zohore envisions these mechanical actors as portraits, storms, and moods of the viewer.
The exhibition’s title draws from an American tongue-twister emphasizing resilience: “Whether the weather be fine, or whether the weather be not…” This playful starting point sets the tone: fairy-tale-like, critical, and at times carnivalesque.
Myths, history, and pop culture collide.
- MZ.30 (Diva), a talking tree, queers the weather with the question “How will she treat you?” inviting viewers into a new experience.
- Drawing from Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake, Zohore reframes “weathering” as the atmospheric pressure surrounding Black life.
Zohore subjects icons and languages—from Nosferatu to The Little Mermaid, German Romanticism to football culture—to a new “atmospheric pressure.” Language, translation, and cultural codes envelop the space like fog or a storm.
Highlighted Works
- Die!, Meerjungfrau, 1922–2025: Halle Bailey’s Black Little Mermaid, May Ayim, and Iron Cross motifs create a hybrid myth.
- Fischers Fritze fischt frische Fische…: An innocent German tongue-twister turns violent, interwoven with slave ship engravings and invasive fish lists.
- Eine unbequeme Wahrheit: Caspar David Friedrich’s Romanticism collides with Kehinde Wiley’s paintings and football scandals.
- Bunter Hund: Afro-German figures and Zohore’s self-portrayal in a dog cage confront exoticism and microaggressions.
Humor and sharp critique intertwine. In one sound installation, the breath of Berliner Luft falters, while works challenging taste and pleasure echo societal memory and environmental collapse.
The Artist’s Practice
Born in 1993, Monsieur Zohore is a provocateur documenting everyday life through performance, sculpture, painting, video, and installation. Domestic labor becomes not a metaphor but an artistic material, transforming paper towels, bureaucratic documents, and mundane objects into rituals and critiques.
Zohore’s practice merges humor with tragedy, the everyday with the sacred. Through repetition, refusal, and ritual, their work elevates labor as both a sacred act and a critique of systems.
Visitor Information
📍 Venue: KOW, Berlin
📅 Dates: On view through November 1, 2025
