Hannah Kaya

A cull to —

Renata Azevedo Moreira
Beyond the # — Failures and Becomings, HTMlles Festival Studio XX, Montréal, November 1–21, 2018
Hannah Kaya A cull to —, performance during the exhibition, Mal(Sous)Entendus / Mi(S) (Xed)Communications, of the festival HTMlles | Au-delà du # — Échecs et devenirs, Studio XX, Montréal, 2018.
Photos : Natacha Clitandre, courtesy of Studio XX, Montréal
Beyond the # — Failures and Becomings, HTMlles Festival Studio XX, Montréal, November 1–21, 2018
[En anglais]

The room was filled with people and noise when artist Hannah Kaya started and finished her intimate twenty-four hour durational performance A cull to —, presented as part of the HTMlles biannual feminist new media art festival produced by Montréal-based artist-run centre, Studio XX. It was the only performance programmed for the festival’s main event, the group exhibition titled Mi(s)(xed)communications / Mal(sous)entendus. Placed in a corner of the central gallery, next to three other artworks that dealt with what comes after the #MeToo denunciations, A cull to — normally received visitors with an emblematic, persistent silence that only Kaya would be able to break.
That was the reason she was there.

Outside of the performance, all that could be seen were promises of a work to come, or traces of a work that had already been. It was, nevertheless, a very cozy space. A futon mattress with lots of pillows was placed on a rug next to a small desk with an open laptop on it. This is where Kaya would work. Hanging from the ceiling, to delimit the installation’s space, two texts written by the artist printed on large sheets of paper formed a sort of physical border around the installation. The first text, which faced her bed, was written one day after Kaya was sexually assaulted. It was her first attempt to try and make sense of what had happened to her.

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This article also appears in the issue 97 - Appropriation
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