A question overheard at an exhibition. A name spoken, then forgotten. A painting made in response—not as a rebuttal, but as an echo.
In this first episode of The Last Judgement, we reflect on Mishka Who?, a painted monograph with no content—just a title and a format, pretending to be part of an established archive. A book that can’t be opened. A name that can’t quite be placed. A legacy suggested, but never confirmed.
To consider the work, Mishka Henner summons the voice of Marcel Broodthaers: poet, conceptual provocateur, and master of formal mimicry. Speaking posthumously, Broodthaers guides us through the object’s surface and structure with dry clarity and quiet affection.
He notes that the book has presence but no substance. That its form is enough to persuade. That legacy, more often than not, is simply well-executed formatting. The title—Mishka Who?—becomes a meditation on near-recognition, almost-legitimacy, and the strange freedom of being misremembered.
This isn’t a biography or a critique in the traditional sense. It’s something in between. A work returned to the world through the lens of someone it never met, but always felt close.
And in this brief encounter across time, we’re reminded that the index is never complete. That meaning isn’t always earned—it’s often designed. And that sometimes, the question is the most precise form a name can take.
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Marcel Broodthaers (1924–1976) was a Belgian poet, artist, and master of institutional mischief. He began his career as a writer before turning to visual art in his 40s, famously embedding unsold copies of his final poetry collection in plaster to mark his shift in medium. From that moment on, he built a body of work that questioned the language of museums, the authority of objects, and the rituals of art history.
His practice ranged from sculpture and film to fictional museums and typographic installations, often using irony, repetition, and formal elegance to expose the mechanics of cultural power. Broodthaers remains a foundational figure in conceptual art—a critical voice disguised as an archivist, always blurring the line between artist and institution.
He died in 1976, but continues to intervene—quietly, persuasively, and often with a wink.
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Mishka Henner (b. 1976) is a Belgian-born, UK-based artist whose work explores visibility, systems, and the mechanics of belief. Working across photography, video, print, and AI, he is best known for appropriating images from satellites, databases, and the internet to examine how power reveals—and conceals—itself.
His projects have taken the form of censored landscapes, erased photobooks, synthetic portraits, and planetary atlases. Across each, Henner invites viewers to reconsider not just what they’re looking at, but how the image got there in the first place.
His work is held in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and other places that keep good records. In 2013, he was awarded the Infinity Award for Art by the International Center of Photography.
He lives and works in Manchester, and continues to ask difficult questions—sometimes through pictures, and sometimes by letting others speak for him.
www.mishkahenner.com
