I Live With a Ghost

I Live With a Ghost is a solo exhibition and immersive installation by April Werle presented at PlatteForum, Denver, 2025. Constructed as a haunted house within the gallery using movable walls, the show treats the haunted house as an external manifestation of internal conflict around racial self-perception — race appearing not as fixed identity but as an exterior presence, taking shape as shadow puppet deities, ghostly silhouettes, and glowing idols.

The installation paired narrative paintings with large-format poems and shadow murals — a hand beside its slightly wrong shadow, a door ajar, a buffet table and skewed windows extending off the canvases themselves. A projected animation periodically cast a bull shadowpuppet onto the gallery floor, pulsating into the form of a stag before disappearing. The tension between these two figures — and between internal self-perception and external misperception — runs throughout the work.

I Live With a Ghost grew out of Werle's residency program at PlatteForum, where she led ArtLab interns through an eight-week exploration of code-switching using mirror pieces. The exhibition brought that inquiry into her own practice: what it means to consciously inhabit multiple cultural identities, and what haunts you when you don't.