Puer Deorum (UK, 1997)
Residency period: May-July 2026
Puer Deorum lives and works in London. Their practice navigates the tension between weight and ephemerality, reflecting on mortality and the shifting experience of time. Drawing from cultural context and psycho-socio-political geographies, they move between monochronic, linear frameworks and polychronic, fluid approaches. Through endurance, duration, and interpretive actions, Puer Deorum amplifies interpersonal encounters, often weaving dream sequences to probe unstable temporalities.
Their work has been presented at Whitechapel Gallery (London), Serendipity Arts Festival (Goa), Les Urbaines (Lausanne), Hugo Boss (London), and Instrument Inventors (The Hague). Solo exhibitions include Filet Gallery (London) and Quench Gallery (Margate). They are the recipient of the Set Studio Prize and an Arts Council DYCP Grant and co-curated the multimedia festival ELO MELO in London with Oitij-jo Collective.
During their residency at La Becque, Puer Deorum will expand their interdisciplinary, performance-centered visual arts practice by exploring spatial design for performance through the lens of cymatics, investigating how sound shapes physical space. Rooted in introspection, embodied research, and movement-based experimentation, they will develop methods for composing sound and movement scores that integrate prose and respond directly to local terrains. The project will involve crafting interactive instruments and objects, as well as documenting these experiments on film. By testing cinematic language, self-documentation, and improvisation within rehearsed dramaturgy, the work will examine the dynamic between impulse and structure, offering new ways to experience the connection between sound, movement, and space.
Puer Deorum, photo Ace Rahman