HONG KONG.- For his third solo show at Gallery Kamel Mennour and his first in the Matignon location, MLK transforms the space into a chimeric domestic set.

A day bed, two chairs, some new paintings, a bunch of unisex clothes, and a curtain of floating pompons define the interior of Princess PomPom, the avatar of the artist he created 10 years ago in Sao Paulo. The room stands like a physical rebus. There is no focal point. Loosely but surely, connections appear though. Relations, rather than resolutions, emerge.


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This show is a multi directional chamber of echo. A few months ago, Matthew came across a book, Pacem in terries (Peace on earth) published after the Geneva World peace conference in 1967. With photo collages and quotes from only men, the book belongs, in many ways from another era. It was dedicated to Martin Luther King whose seminal speech at Riverside Church condemned the Vietnam War.

But as history repeats itself we wonder : What if Buddhist philosophy – which is more than a religion - was more widely spread, heard and applied ? Cause we know, thanks Audre Lorde, that ''the Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House''(1). We need to find other paradigms.

Buddha, “The awakened one”, was born in Ancient India (today’s Nepal) in the 6th century BC The imagery of Matthew’s paintings on textile draws inspiration from narratives of the Dhammapada, a collection of poetic sayings attributed to the Buddha. They are also reminiscent of the Tibetan tangkas. (2) and of manuscripts covers.

India is also where the new capital of Chandigarh was founded right after the independence, in 1947. Pierre Jeanneret co-designed with Le Corbusier this utopian modernist city for the transitioning country. Many of the serial institutional furniture have been progressively discarded. They were recently brought back to Europe to become symbols of luxury Western design. This is the way it goes. But we need to take a closer look at their complex hybridity. Those furnitures were produced with the overlooked Indian designers and architects as Urmila Eulie Chowdhury, Jeet Malhotra and Aditya Prakash (3). Those forgotten figures reemerge, finally regaining attention.

The bed and the chairs have been re-customized by Matthew, allowing somehow the return of the subconscious, bringing new narratives.

The foam of the mattress that he carved was also the tool he used to stamp his paintings that were also partly silkscreened. “The more Buddhas the better”, he says. They popped up everywhere.

Buddha’s finger tips are showing the way. They do not point towards the sky (nor Starlink nor planets), but towards the earth. Let’s reconnect. “All Living Beings Are Just This One Mind”. The painted flowers are also Buddha’s manifestation. They open up. Actually, a citrus fruit native to India from the cedar tree family are called “Buddhas hands”. Cedar and tekwoods were indeed used in Chandigarh. The frames of the paintings are also integrated onto their compositions. Not additional, not supplemental. They do not create frontiers, they are transcontinental borders. One is all. All is one.

Poetic state is the contrary of passive despair. For Patrick Chamoiseau, the world is full of relational possibilities to resist the unthinkable (4). This is the only way out. So, lie on the day bed, play with the costumes in the basement, layer yourself, dare to transform yourself, speak out, and speak to each other. Touch the soft wool pompons - they are Buddhas and will touch you back. When you are angry, blue is supposed to heal.



1 : Audre Lord in a 1979 conference on commemorating the 30th anniversary of “The Second Sex" by Simone de Beauvoir at NYU. Text published in Sister Outsider, 1984, Ten Spreed Press.

2: Other influences are from Kado (the art of Japanese flower arrangement), the tradition of flower offerings.

3 : see Gregor Wittrick, Petra Seitz, and Nia Thandapani, “Design Crime in Context: Mass-manufactured Design, Design-as-art, and Chandigarh’s Modernist Furniture” in Art Crime in Context: Global Perspectives on Art and Heritage Crime, Springer, 2022 about the systematic erasure of the names of those young designers who worked with Jeanneret, like Urmila Eulie Chowdhury, Jeet Malhotra and Aditya Prakash.

4 : Patrick Chamoiseau, Que peut la littérature quand elle ne peut?, Seuil, 2025.



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