Chameleon Home
What makes a home? The artists Kieron Jina and Mathias Becker bring sequences from dance, theatre and abstract art to places where people are spending a large part of their everyday life, especially during the recent global pandemic: They transform the sheltered sphere of private homes into spaces for stories that are revealed through live performance, online spaces and projections in public space. In this way, art connects directly with the individual and collective stories of the people, the districts and the houses in which they live. Chameleon Home explores the city beyond its familiar stories, beyond the traditional images, and leaves room for the untold.
Idea & Concept: Kieron Jina
Creation and direction: Kieron Jina & Mathias Becker
Web and graphic design: Chen Hsiao-Ying
Sound design: Yogin Sullaphen
Performance: Mmakgosi Kgabi, Anelisa ‘Annalyzer’ Stuurman, Gretchen Blegen, Rafi Martin, Ida Meri Meinel and Stuttgart-based artists
Thursday, July 23, 7:00 p.m.
Friday, July 24, 7:00 p.m.
Saturday, July 25, 6:00 p.m.
Zoom live stream
Kieron Jina, © Ugo Woatzi
Kieron Jina
is a multidisciplinary artist in the fields of performance dance, choreography, video art, photography and film, researcher and mediator of creative processes and lecturer. He lives in Johannesburg. He completed his Master of Arts at Wits University. Kieron Jina’s interests include African Futurism, migration, identity, new technologies, immersive and site-specific performance, collaborations, and interdisciplinary creative practice. He was named one of the “200 Top M&G Young South Africans” in the category Art and Culture for Performance Art. He also received a DanceWeb grant at the ImPulseTanz Festival in Vienna, an Ovation Award for choreography at the National Art Festival of South Africa and a grant from the Goethe Co-Production Fund for the production of DOWN TO EARTH at the Tanzfabrik in Berlin. He has completed artistic residencies and projects in Brazil, Germany, Austria, France, Reunion Island, Nigeria, Tanzania, South Korea and Switzerland. Kieron Jina is founder and curator of Queer Art Night South Africa and is currently touring with #FEMMEINPUBLIC, DOWN TO EARTH and PINK MONEY. In 2019 he was selected as a participant for the International Forum Theatertreffen of the Berliner Festspiele in Berlin. His project PAUSE was performed at William Kentridge’s Centre For The Less Good Idea in Johannesburg and the interdisciplinary collaborative work INTERTHREAD was performed at the Infecting the City Festival in Cape Town. He was Artist in Residence at the A4 Arts Foundation in Cape Town for the work on his new production CATCH FEELINGS, NOT FLIGHTS.
Mathias Becker
studied contemporary puppetry at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin from 2010 to 2014. Januar 2024 he founded the collective MANUFAKTOR, since then he has worked as a freelance puppeteer, actor and director in various constellations. In autumn 2014, the DAAD enabled him to receive a research grant in Boston and New York. Mathias Becker was Artist in Residence at the Goethe Institute in Beijing. After a tour of China with MANUFAKTOR 2018 he directed the production “The Ape of Hartlepool” at the Junges Nationaltheater Mannheim. In 2019 he was invited to the International Forum Theatertreffen Berlin. After production, co-direction and performance of the German-Namibian co-production “Rehearsing Mwange/Becker” he realised the group work “Qingdao – a messy archive” as an online performance in 2020.