Mike Kelley’s Childhood Shown to Us - A Visit to Ghost and Spirit

By Beatrice Morandi

Mike Kelley was an artist who didn’t even like to call himself one. His work resisted categories, and his life was no different. The exhibition Ghost and Spirit, held at Tate Modern from 3 October 2024 to 9 March 2025, offers a deeply emotional and disorienting journey through Kelley’s inner world. It’s not an easy exhibition - but it’s unforgettable. 

From the moment I walked in, I felt unprepared. Without the wall texts beside each piece, I wouldn’t have understood what I was looking at. That confusion, I think, was part of the experience. Kelley didn’t want to explain things in neat terms. He wanted us to feel, to react, to be unsettled. 

“A ghost is someone who disappears,” Kelley wrote in a poem placed next to a series of his own signatures - drawn over and over again during a personal crisis. He grew up in a suburb of Detroit, in what he called a dysfunctional family. The first room reflects that trauma. It features 'Performance-Related Objects', items from his youth presented like relics. They speak to the discomfort behind the illusion of the American Dream. 

Kelley’s early work stemmed from his involvement in anarchist and underground music scenes. His performances and poetry were filled with emotional contradiction. In one room, giant origami sculptures tower over you. They’re strange and beautiful, yet almost threatening. You walk among them like you’re inside someone’s memory. 

The next space is haunting. Broken children’s toys are scattered across the room, some molded and melted, others eerily familiar. Kelley’s face appears on some of them, confronting you. The loneliness is palpable, like walking through a forgotten childhood where the silence has weight. 

Then comes a sudden shift. A rhythmic noise begins to grow, and you follow it into the largest room. It’s techno-like music, echoing through chaos. A massive cartoon maze covers half the floor. You can’t see into it, and that blindness is oddly disturbing. In the corners, flashing orbs light up without a pattern. It’s overstimulating and strange - but gripping. 

This part of the exhibition confronts societal expectations. Kelley presents a perfect suburban home, almost artificial in its neatness, next to a small theatre where sex workers perform. It’s absurd and raw at once. He’s showing us the hidden contradictions of American culture - what we present to the world, and what we try to hide. 

The final pieces are quieter but powerful. A series of school party photographs caught me off guard. They were simple, but honest. I felt a bit of nostalgia, like remembering something I didn’t know I missed. 

The last piece, Empty Gym, is a dark video installation. It leaves you with an eerie stillness, like watching life from the outside. It’s haunting, and deeply human. 

Ghost and Spirit doesn’t just show us Mike Kelley’s childhood. It invites us to confront parts of our own.