Solo exhibition, curated by Yarda Krampol
They tell me a mother is not a person but a place. I stand, leave the house, and leave the block of buildings searching for traces in the trees, in the rubble, in the mud, in all recipients of lived memories. I’m looking for a form to translate into language. Stay still. Can you hear the silence? Breathe. Let your legs get entangled in the branches. Is that an arm? Something else? Another body I perceive as mine? Touch it. Can you feel its pain? Through its weeds it unravels the memories of its past, opening injuries unknown to me. A map of distant places emerges, as suddenly drowsiness takes hold of me. Black bile, blue nausea. Down deep in the water, in the entrails of the river, I hear whispers of a history of violence, a haunting legacy demanding mourning. It etches the shape of its forgotten ruins, a devastation shrouded in secrecy. Water keeps rising. Stomach, chest, larynx. A relationship is established, an ecology has been set into motion. We’re unconsciously transforming into one another, conjointly condemned to continue grieving. The possibility of being formed and thereby creating form. No longer I alone, but we many. Deconstruction, reconstruction, reconciliation. Keep searching, continue walking. Dripping, crying, wet, going further, deep into the soil. Stretch, coil, stab, intersect. A sudden shock, we fall, something cracks, it hurts. A sharp sting moves from the roots all the way up to the spine, it lingers and seems reluctant to leave. Stay pain, change will blow our way. Now in the tip of my fingers, its shifting nature cheats my limbs. We’ve been made to believe that we are expanding, but it’s simply that we’re just slowly freezing. Solidified, reaching over somewhere far in time. Genealogies encoded where future and past intimately entwine, where stones have transformed into bones. We bear witness, yet instinctively close our eyes when in fear. Over and over returning, keep looking back, always moving. Human bodies, bodies human, bodies non-human, bodies more-than-human. We clasp each other, a mutual grip continually remade. Keep holding.
— Pia Laborde-Noguez