When I came to Switzerland, I carried with me a few odd kinds of silences. The residency was kind enough to afford these to me as a research question that I could then carry in the palm of my hand, like a rare, exotic, regional flower from homeland. But what it really was, was an inherited weight of gaps. Everyone here looked at it with awe, with interest. I handed it to many here, to hold it for me for a while.
Silence. The kind that we inherit in our families, the kind that is handed down to us as heirloom. The kinds that had me carry gaps and black spaces, and ask women around me in this new foreign land, to fill these gaps for me.
My pursuit slowly shaped into my research project and as I went on with conversation with the world here, I began to, in ways, define the aura and shape of silence. I learnt there could be a whole museum built with many kinds of silences. Silence, had in itself, a museum worthy discourse in it. Silence had within itself many loud, truths and meanings. And, silence, had somewhere within it, an innate desire to be heard and said.
Been a month here, I walked on foot exploring new cities, becoming friends with other international artists on residency here, building coalitions for exchange of ideas, and one by one handed them this exotic plant of a kind. Friends, as now I call them, gave me back their inherited silence from their cultures, the kinds that they too had brought on with them.
