MATERNAL FANTASIES | performance “The First Supper Enacted”

MATERNAL FANTASIES
The First Supper Enacted (2026)

live performance in four episodes
an event accompanying the exhibition “Our Child”

Arsenal Gallery in Białystok
27 June, 2026 (Saturday), 1.30 am
An event accompanying the exhibition “Our Child”

Having shown a photograph of MATERNAL FANTASIES’ The First Supper (2023) for the first time at the Arsenal Gallery in Białystok,* MATERNAL FANTASIES are now returning to Białystok for the premiere of their newly developed live performance The First Supper Enacted (2026). In this live performance, members of the MATERNAL FANTASIES group are re-enacting the famous and frequently restaged religious mural The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci (1494-1498) from a feminist, collective, and non-religious perspective.

MATERNAL FANTASIES’ First Supper Enacted is an experimental and raw live performance, played out around the table of the first supper in varying constellations and episodes. The four episodes evolve on the basis of a rotational authorship model developed by MF in 2018, wherein each member directs a scene according to a set of self-imposed rules, while also a performer in scenes directed by the others. The model follows the simple “switch as leader and follower” rule, leaving room for mutual influence, feedback, shared ideas and interaction. This non-hierarchical MF approach embraces ROTATION – DIY – PROFESSIONAL AMATEURSHIP – and ART BRUT AESTHETICS. Instead of wine, milk. Instead of bread, milk; everything is replaced with milk, most humans and other mammals’ first meal. Instead of order, improvisation. Scores are executed, chores and tasks repeated, rotated, and put on hold, time freezing again and again. In the performance, the four MF members use masks to conjure up and bring to the table the missing members of their collective, self-chosen feminist ancestors, and mystic creatures. This is how MATERNAL FANTASIES open up their table, embracing the past, present, and future – and the unfiltered, fantastical imagination of all creatures and humans gathering around a table to try and spiritedly fathom a speculative utopian society of mutual care, in humorous contrast to a world of toxic masculinity, egocentrism, patriarchy, and capitalism.

Idea, concept, props and costumes, directed and performed by MATERNAL FANTASIES: Aino El Solh, Magdalena Kallenberger, Hanne Klaas and Isabell Spengler

* At the group exhibition “Radical Parenthood”, 17 November 2023–21 January 2024, curated by Eliza Urwanowicz-Rojecka.

Co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund