The exhibition “NYX” at Istituto Svizzero in Milan arises from a deep dialogue between artists Maude Léonard-Contant and Monia Ben Hamouda, drawing inspiration from the mythological determine of Nyx, the Greek goddess of evening and chaos, and Anne Carson’s ebook Nox, which delves into themes of ache and loss. These influences merge to create an exhibition that explores the complexity of language and reminiscence as means to specific the ineffable and untranslatable.

Maude, born in a multilingual atmosphere and formed by her private experiences, creates sculptures that bear witness to her recollections and feelings. Her works, crafted on a base of medicinal pink clay, incorporate texts and supplies evoking locations and important moments of her life, comparable to oxidized metal sheet, rooster and peacock feathers, and Himalayan salt. Every component is fastidiously chosen to evoke sensations and pictures tied to her childhood and previous experiences, and the best way Maude manipulates supplies displays a deep and emotional connection to her work.

In her work, Monia repeatedly offers with the that means of language or the untranslatability of sure phrases (but additionally emotions). Her new work developed for the exhibition is a radical gesture: the artist dispenses with the types from Arabic calligraphy typically used so far and performs with the visible and sensual energy of turmeric.

Within the second exhibition area, Monia’s drawings and Maude’s two small sculptures supply a extra intimate and introspective ambiance. These works proceed to discover the theme of language and reminiscence, inviting the viewer to delve into the depths of the human expertise and confront the problem of expressing the inexpressible via phrases.

Nyx is the Greek goddess of the evening. She was born from chaos and emerges from the ocean every night. She has lent us her title for this double exhibition that includes Maude Léonard-Contant and Monia Ben Hamouda. The exhibition title, “NYX,” was conceived throughout an e-mail alternate with the 2 artists. An alternate of concepts between Basel, Milan and Rome. The title additionally attracts inspiration from Anne Carson’s ebook Nox, the place the Canadian writer and poet explores themes of grief and loss, crafting an elegy on her brother’s demise, though “Phrases can’t add to it.” Maude shares Anne Carson’s Canadian roots and a penchant for chilly and ice, and each artists share the poet’s preoccupation with language as a (generally insufficient) creative materials. In discussing language, the Roman Nox grew to become NYX. Extra a picture than a phrase, it embodies the evening and the potential of chaos, in addition to a inventive second—a resurgence from darkness. For Maude and Monia, the goddess Nyx can be linked to demise and therapeutic processes, themes which have preoccupied each artists in latest months, which resonate of their new works produced for this exhibition. Moreover, there’s a notion that the goddess herself is watching over the exhibition mission, maybe having as soon as endowed us with the language and phrases we use to suppose, communicate and write about this mission. Maude and Monia each grew up between languages. Maude’s mom tongue is Canadian French; later she studied in English. Immediately she lives in German-speaking Switzerland, participating with the German (that she speaks) and Swiss German of the individuals round her. Monia is the daughter of an Italian mom and a Tunisian father, and grew up talking Italian in Milan. She is aware of Tunisian Arabic from lengthy summer season holidays in her father’s homeland. For Maude and Monia, their installations, sculptures, work and drawings are additionally a way of communication. Furthermore, the written phrase was central to the collaborative evolution of “NYX.” I feel all of us share an ideal sensitivity for language. And but, all of us generally lack the phrases to specific our feelings or vulnerabilities. This, too, is addressed in “NYX.” In Maude’s observe, language typically serves because the preliminary catalyst. “Language”, she tells Monia and me, “helps me to search out types.” Writing for her incessantly replaces sketching. For the exhibition in Milan, Maude developed new sculptures, every resting upon a basis of pink medicinal clay (“sitting,” as Maude places it, including that clay is the color of the soil it comes from, and that she solely just lately found the pink earth). The set up is nourished by three texts by which Maude interweaves recollections of rising up, particular locations and figures from her childhood, and three deaths (of a tree, a neighbour named Laval, and a rooster). Fragments of those narratives will be discovered within the titles of her works and in her sculptures, the place inverted letters sometimes coalesce into phrases and sentences. These letters are crafted from sheet steel and dusted with a fragile layer of pink clay. Maude initially wished to make use of honey as an adhesive for the clay, however it didn’t persist with the steel, so she ended up utilizing Vaseline. Maude writes me that she truly has considerably of an aversion to Vaseline, however whereas making use of the petroleum jelly to the letters, she realized the tenderness of this gesture: the therapeutic earth and the care in direction of her sculptures. Exploring and studying from supplies are necessary to the artist. She develops shut relationships along with her “beloved supplies” as she writes to me, viewing them as vessels of emotional resonance intertwined with recollections and an instantaneous haptic engagement via contact and manipulation. The roster of supplies employed within the creation of the sculptures evokes a myriad of associations and realms: pleated organza, poppy blossoms, peacock and cock feathers, Himalayan salt, selenite (a translucent crystal), oxidized sheet metal, and porcupine quills. For Maude, every materials is tethered to locations and recollections: the corrugated roof of her household’s sheepfold, the crystals ingested by her neighbour (an nearly legendary determine), the salt from the lickstones that the cows shaped into sculptures with their tongues, the therapeutic earth that her mom used to heal wounds, the poppy flowers from the backyard, whose impact is therapeutic or dangerous relying on the dosage, or the silty mattress of the river the place Maude swam as a toddler. “I have to admit,” Maude wrote me a couple of days in the past, “I don’t but know what impact this work could have.” In accordance with Maude, the sculpture group could possibly be a type of ritualistic area whose energetic presence permeates the exhibition area and past. The letter sculptures “Oh, what a flood final summer season,” “Unfathomable volumes of water,” and “Sieh mich ein letztes Mal an!” [‘Look at me one last time!’] “I’ve by no means been that prime in July”) evoke the mighty drive of expansive our bodies of water. My thoughts wanders to the liminal zone between water and land, the place the ocean meets the shore. The substrate of scattered medicinal clay jogs my memory of this mutable terrain.

A few of the sculptures appear to be marooned, or emerge from the sand like ethereal apparitions (or recollections?). Maude’s works are at all times about excavation, about revealing the hidden (from the sand, from reminiscence). Maybe these sculptures additionally allude to language itself: its capability to solidify recollections, to repair them (just like the sentences surfacing from the sand), and but its inherent inadequacy in capturing sure feelings in phrases. The muddy riverbed beneath my toes, the sensation of operating my fingers over silk.

The world between Maude’s set up and Monia’s work serves as a zone of transition, or additionally contamination. A pivotal facet within the collaborative improvement of this exhibition was exploring how the 2 works have interaction in a dialogue with one another, how they contaminate one another (in a optimistic sense). The turmeric from Monia’s work Burial of all meanings leaves delicate yellow traces that mingle in locations with the pink-hued medicinal clay and on Maude’s sculptures, which, in flip, solid their tales onto the yellow-painted wall. Monia’s creative works incessantly delve into her bicultural and bilingual life (and their related biases and misunderstandings). Via her father, she has discovered about Arabic calligraphy, a outstanding side of Islamic artwork rising from Arabic script and the context of picture prohibition in Islam, by which texts (typically from the Koran) develop into a decorative picture. For a number of years now, Monia has channelled her curiosity in calligraphy into her installations. She employs laser-cut metal shapes oscillating between picture and writing, between exact types and painterly abstraction, between drawing and sculpture, and combines them with spices (turmeric, cinnamon or chilli powder) that present a visible and olfactory context. Her new work Burial of all meanings builds upon these gestures in an much more radical means: the set up, with its aromatic, vibrant yellow turmeric, is created utilizing a concrete mixer. The shapes and traces of the spice on the wall and flooring might solely be managed to a restricted extent; the machine’s rotating actions counsel a way of violence. The abstracted characters have vanished. Their absence can be an expression of Monia’s wrestle with language, in search of the “proper” phrases given the state of the world. In a Zoom name, Monia tells Maude and me concerning the untranslatability of the Arabic phrase “qaher,” typically translated as “anger” however truly encapsulating a way of persistent, indignant powerlessness within the face of oppression and racism. The boundaries of language. The impossibility of adequately expressing feelings with phrases. For Monia, Burial of all meanings can be a mirrored image on her personal place as an artist, grappling along with her privilege of with the ability to voice dissent along with her voice and thru her works, and the frustration of linguistic inadequacies and the way statements will be misunderstood, mistranslated or instrumentalized. The turmeric, with its anti-inflammatory and fortifying attributes, serves as a reminder of moments of therapeutic and care. Much like Maude, who fastidiously rubs the tin letters with Vaseline, Burial of all meanings additionally calls for Monia’s care and a spotlight—the spice should be repeatedly replenished all through the length of the exhibition.

The second exhibition area serves as a type of counter-space: the grand, sweeping gesture of the big corridor offers means right here to an environment of intimacy and introspection. Monia’s small-format drawings operate as workout routines of the hand and thoughts. They emerge shortly from the direct motion of her drawing hand, guided by instinct and with minimal affect from acutely aware thought. Maybe they’re an try to seize feelings straight from the physique via the arms onto paper. Maude’s two small sculptures—How the warmth wilts my silks and Giving her utmost at dressing the useless rooster—are partly wrapped in silk. Their round types and entwined feathers echo the strains of Monia’s drawings. “Tongues of fireside,” remarks Maude. Tongues of fireside—for recollections, experiences and feelings that we can’t at all times describe with phrases alone, that discover no place within the generally inflexible types of our languages. Tongues of fireside that talk to the state of the world. One thing is burning in my thoughts, and the turmeric itches pleasantly unpleasantly in my nostril.

—Gioia Dal Molin

at Istituto Svizzero, Milan
till June 29, 2024