TINA is pleased to present To be, or not to be, a new exhibition by Philip Ewe comprising a live performance, an installation of found theatrical objects, light fittings retrieved from Ewe's father's lighting business in the 80s & 90s, non-human collaborators and new photographic works. Together, the exhibition is obliquely framed within a paternal reading of Hamlet, centred on ideas of mortality, presence and closeness. In this light, the work examines speech as both an act of self-realisation and a mechanism through which power is exercised, asking how public discourse is staged, witnessed and ultimately instrumentalised.

Borrowing its title from Shakespeare’s most recognisable line, the exhibition does not revisit Hamlet as literature so much as the unresolved question that has long surrounded its most famous speech. Is ‘To be or not to be’ an interior soliloquy, granting the audience privileged access to Hamlet’s private thoughts? Or is it spoken aloud, unknowingly overheard by two characters already watching him? The distinction fundamentally reshapes the speech’s meaning. In one reading, language becomes a space of existential introspection, where thought and identity are formed. In the other, speech is already implicated within systems of observation, where confession becomes evidence and vulnerability is exposed to surveillance.

This ambiguity forms the conceptual framework for Ewe’s new performance. Lasting approximately thirty minutes, ...