黑料不打烊

After Laughter Comes Tears is an experimental exhibition dedicated to performance, and the second edition of the Mudam Performance Season launched in 2021. Conceived as a 鈥榩erformative exhibition鈥�, After Laughter Comes Tears will feature the work of thirty-four artists working across the mediums of performance, installation and video. Titled after the 1964 track 鈥楢fter Laughter鈥� by American soul singer and songwriter Wendy Rene, the exhibition unfolds in four acts, mimicking the theatrical narrative of prologue, act 1, act 2, act 3, act 4 and epilogue. By considering moving image and installation as much as the exhibition and its scenography as performative objects, After Laughter Comes Tears proposes to expand the definition of performance. Simultaneously, it grounds the medium of performance within the museum, which traditionally hosts it as an occasional and timed utterance.

The exhibition takes as its starting point the feeling of stasis and anger that defines this later stage of capitalism endorsed by most societies. It is framed by the anxieties of a generation facing a climate crisis, welfare states trampled and failed by neoliberal policies and the rise of xenophobia and far-right parties across the globe, partly fuelled by fake news spreading on- and offline. Adopting the humorous, and at times, dramatic tone that is characteristic of theatricality and embracing the ambiguity that exists between those states, After Laughter Comes Tears unfolds through a narrative that speaks to and of bodies, politics and their fraught relationship under capitalist systems. The works of emerging artists, in dialogue with more established ones, consider the crisis of care and deeply entrenched notions of normalcy, aiming to make visible and thereby question standardised approaches to social and biological norms.

Is laughter the best medicine to soothe despair? Humour 鈥� and at times, cynicism 鈥� is a characteristic feature of contemporary internet culture, which uses memes and gifs as producers of a brand of humour tapping into our shared sense of sarcasm. Drawing from the ironical tone that we identify as being that of a disillusioned generation, as well as from a long history of satirical resistance, the exhibition sets a stage for play with the tensions and frictions inextricably linking comedy and tragedy. Tragicomedy is also a popular theatre genre, circling back to the roots of performance as a discipline. It evokes a sense of drama and the expression of feelings, a rollercoaster of emotions animating the body. Facial expressions and bodily reactions linked to fear, exhaustion, rage, disgust, affection and pleasure 鈥� feelings that merge and coexist within each one of us, are expressed differently according to personal and collective histories. Like humour, they are not just intuitive, individual reactions, but rather depend on social and cultural contexts.