So foreign. So familiar. Who visits these days, the Portikus, the exhibition hall of the städel Museum in Frankfurt school on the main island, which is embraced by pleasant sounds that have both a little Mysterious, as well as immediately Accessible. Who is asked to take off his shoes. We are entering a sacred space, go around on a soft velour carpet of light beige color, light-footed, out of sixteen from the ceiling speakers, hanging tones, sometimes quiet, sometimes louder, voices of men and women, some leading, some in the Background, swelling and rising, you can follow a while the various melodies until you lose elsewhere in the room.
Michael Holzer
culture editor of the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.
F. A. Z.
Hiking The voices, the visitor roams the more than ever a White Cube corresponding to the Interior of the architectural structure, were it not for the large window that gives a clear view of the Main, on Vegetation, and urban landscape. So little hermetically, the structural Situation is, in fact, so much to the world, this work of Hajra Waheed is relative, even if she initially acts like a contemplative of reality, and just as you claim your own reality and from everyday life, facing away from the sphere. But the title and especially the songs that form the raw material for the sound installation “Hum”, references to politics, society, conflicts in Africa and the far East.
Originally in 1980, canadian-born artist with family roots has created in South India for the Lahore Biennale 02 in Pakistan, where it was shown at a historical site, the Diwan-i-Am-a 1628-built Auditorium with 40 columns. The contrast with the portico is evident. That is one of the singing touched immediately with its beauty, overwhelmed, speak for the music as a universal language, in which, especially if it’s folk songs or from the resistance against authority and repression-born pieces, a all the cultures of a cross-humanism is revealed. Contributes to this impression is essential that the Presentation appeals to the most people to the extent that you have served your one. Everything is humming.
Longing claims to be a hopeful song
Kurdish folk songs, a with of the persecuted Rohingya community in Burma, a very popular song, from the civil movements in the Arab world, estimated pieces of Imam Mohamed Ahmed Issa, the verses of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, poems of the Pakistani revolution, poet Habib Jalib, song of Sudanese singer Mohammed Osman Wardi: All of this found its way into the Sound Collage of Hajra Waheed, in the to hear the voice of the 1991-born Nûdem Durak is that was imprisoned, 2015 in Turkey, because they had performances in their Kurdish mother tongue is sung. By 2034, they should remain in prison. This kind of information, the Listen change: The engaging buzz is longing to complain and hope-filled song that evokes a world in which it would be different.
The artist has spent as the daughter of a geologist much of her youth in Saudi Arabia in a settlement for employees of a giant oil Company. In the “gated community” of their early years prevailed strict security controls, the Photograph was prohibited. What is real, what is fictional? Your own experience does not allow for a clear answer. Hajra Waheed has worked with a variety of materials and various media. Where the is always the Mysterious circles, in life and art alike, everywhere in appearance. And, in particular, has in mind: to open up a space of possibilities.
“Hum” To 6. September. Portikus, Frankfurt, Old Bridge 2. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 11 to 18, Wednesday to 20 clock
