MACKENZY BERGILE

Bergile is an interdisciplinary Franco-Haitian artist whose practice lies at the crossroads of dance, poetry, music, and the visual arts. In Identity Is A Rumor, Until Death Writes it Down, he has used the self-portrait as a way to shift frames of reference and open a field of inquiry. In his refusal of any form of univocal representation, he explores the mechanisms that shape our identity: historical, cultural, and political legacies, family histories, transmitted desires, and traces of a colonial past. All these forces continue to act on our bodies. Inspired by Haitian culture, the history of European art, African American dance, and a critique of dominant norms, this solo piece combines personal memory and shared experience. Here, inheriting does not mean to receive an intact bequest, instead learning to compose with what remains, with the gaps, and with multiple voices, while also constructing the genealogy one wants, made of the unions one chooses, the ascendancies one imagines, and the stories one has yet to tell. This piece embraces uncertainty, preserves complexity, and resists anything that seeks to freeze, assign, or close, all for the sake of keeping one’s identity within a free, open space that is always becoming something new.