Gaudel de Stampa

It is a silent cry, of those that are stifled that Hatice Pinarbaşi presents in Silent Choral. A veiled song, a burnt cry, a silent lament… More than a melody to listen to, these are voices that must be heard. It is a question of crossing the border, this curtain of pearls and shards of glass, to penetrate in the world of the ghosts and the invisible ones. There, long veils hanging or suspended, rise up suggesting bodies, draped, inflamed, made up – from these flowing forms emerge faces in tension. Each note of music reveals facial expressions, and it is a real choir that unfolds and observes us, ready to make its strings vibrate. We appeal to the power of music – to unite our voices and make our chests resonate, to form a collective body in unison, in harmony. From the power of the song that bewitches, gathers, enchants or makes one shudder.

By the drape which suggests, offers as much as it conceals and protects, the artist summons the veil to evoke the political history of the body of the women, as to give body to the painting, in order to incarnate those which one sets up in muse or that one tramples in victim. The artist invites the ghosts of her childhood, of the Kurdish culture in which she grew up, to the muffled voices of Alevism that inhabit her practice.

It is a question here of opening the curtain, of lifting the veil on the things which one cannot keep silent. And as if to compensate for this silence, the artist pushes a cry. Drawing from the orality of forms, borrowing the language of music, mathematics, signs and symbols, Hatice Pinarbaşi composes a strange, illiterate and vindictive language.

It is necessary to invent a new language to say what is silent, it is necessary to listen to the voice of ghosts to make the living resonate.

Juliette Lecorne
April 2023

Exhibition from April 20 to June 08, 2023.