NEWS - natacha nisic

Come to trace through smoke – FRISE gallery, Hamburg.

“After living through or undergoing catastrophe, we can no more emerge unscathed than we can leave paradise undiminished: from the latter we emerge fallen, from the former as a miraculous survivor. It is the same in matters of representation. To represent an Edenic place, to depict a catastrophe, you have to come at it from the side, to shift the frontality of the indescribable, take a step to one side, open up to an oblique approach that in fact stems from the subject itself, in that it forces us to look aside.” (Florent Perrier on the work of N. Nisic)

For the exhibition at FRISE, Natacha Nisic brings together three sets of work to create a kind of cartography of human affect in extreme situations. The video Saint-Désir l’Exil (2021) – a kind of haiku in motion – relates images taken at the heart of a nuclear power plant in the Rhône Valley in southern France to the face of a gentle woman, the artist’s mother, who died the following month. The Fukushima series of drawings, created since 2013, borrows its motifs from anonymous bodies of caregivers, rescuers and emergency workers acting in crisis situations. The numerous media images of the triple disaster of 11 March 2011 in Japan, and later of the Corona pandemic, serve as the iconographic basis for the drawings, in which fine, metallic, iridescent pencil strokes form poses, gestures and postures in a web-like manner. Les fumées is a series of drawings and notes made during the genocide trial of two Rwandan mayors in Paris in 2018. Natacha Nisic followed the trial for almost three months. Without being able to photograph or record, she captured the gestures and attitudes of the unfolding scene as a simple spectator: Defendants, witnesses, jurors, lawyers appear as actors or reporters of the events that took place in Kabarondo, Rwanda, in 1994. Excerpts from the trial and notes accompany the drawings, which reproduce the entire trial as a fragmented archive, as a memory of extreme violence

Opening: Saturday, 2.9.23 at 6 pm

Duration of the exhibition: 3.9. – 10.9.

Opening hours: Fri, Sat. + Sun, 15 – 18 h.

and appointments on 0152-21610030 or nisic.natacha@gmail.com

Other events:

Sun, 2.9. from 21.30: Open-air cinema evening of the Trading Center in the courtyard of FRISE, including Natacha Nisic’s film Osoresan,

Wed, 6.9, 7.30 pm at FRISE: What does Natacha Nisic actually film? And why?

Film screening with Natacha Nisic in conversation with Regine Steenbock

Gestos. Una colección posible, MNAV – Museo nacional de Artes Visuales, Montevideo, Uruguay. Bienalsur , 10.09.2023 to 31.12.2023

In 1958, Bruno Munari published a supplement to the Italian dictionary, integrating a type of non-verbal communication that he considered key to understanding “the speech of the Italians”. Inspired by the dictionary La mimica degli antichi investigata nel gestire napoletano, Munari developed his “dictionary of gestures” and, noticing the intense process of internationalisation that this type of non-verbal communication was undergoing, he pointed out its usefulness for visitors to Italy.
This logic of gestural communication is part of research involving disciplines such as theatre, dance or performance, but it is also present in the investigations of visual artists. The hands are associated with the everyday, with domestic chores, handicrafts, work on the land, as well as with care, caresses, love and healing. Taking up these dimensions, this curatorial proposal seeks to think about the commonality and diversity of the human condition with a group of contemporary artists who have focused part of their creative project on this singular type of gesturality.

Curated by Diana B. Wechsler (Arg) and Matilde Marin (Arg)

Les Fumées – Carnet d’un procès pour génocide, Rwanda 1994-France 2018, 618 pages, Creaphis . June 2023. To order

THE SMOKES
DIARIES OF THE RWANDA GENOCIDE TRIAL
1994-FRANCE 2018 – TEXT BY HÉLÈNE DUMAS
In 2018, the artist Natacha Nisic attended the appeal trial in France of the two people responsible for the Tutsi genocide, Tito Barahira and and Octavien Ngenzi, in the commune of Kabarondo, Rwanda. She drew and took notes during the sessions, capturing the exchanges, moods, postures, behaviour, tensions and emotions, and she has without any claim to exhaustiveness or objectivity, in an operative incompleteness. As we go through these written images we are in turn captured. This process is crucial for what it issues of history, justice and memory. The historian Hélène Dumas, also present at the trial and an expert witness as an expert witness, provides us with the keys to understanding the trial in an introductory text. Outside the theatre of the court of assizes, her own notes and the sources from the recordings show us a different path. The notebooks, which seem to have remained in the courtroom, keep the memory alive. The continuous writing contained in these notebooks forms a work of art. This book falls somewhere between the artist’s book and the scientific book, and aesthetic interpretation and a scientific approach to the trial. It is also a powerful historical document : it is a book about genocide, but it is also part of a reflection on genocide trials in general. Through the artist’s own subjectivity, and Hélène Dumas’s commitment as a historian, this book touches our sensibilities and makes us question ourselves: we have the keys to reading, which is part of the overall history of the French nation and the world.

Les Fumées, éditions Créaphis, 2023

To read about : À la frontière (20) – Lorine Niedecker, Natacha Nisic, Claude Simon & Aurélien d’Avout, Philippe Azoury & Jean Eustache, Christian Rosset, Diakritik, 28. 06.2023

Autour de la préservation du vivant. OSORESAN (Mount of Fear) – Projection Festival Densités, 9th June 2023 . Meuse Grand Est

TRIENNALE d’Art Contemporain CHALEUR HUMAINE, Frac Grand large, Dunkerque, curated by Anna Colin and Camille Richert

TOO MUCH magazine, Magazine of Romantic Geography, The sacred, Tokyo, Article :After the Storm, One Voice Remains, p164.

Hans und Lea Grundig preis – for The Crown Letter – Kunst als Widerspruch, at the Rosa Luxembourg Stftung, Berlin. Watch the vide

Von hier aus, Acht künstlerische Positionen aus den Residenzen 2019–2022, Rolff Stiftung, Burggladbach, Germany, 9-12 September 2022

Pravo Ljudski Film Festival, Sarajevo – Projection of Saint-Désir – l’Exil, 9’15”, 17-22 September 2022

Rencontres Internationales Paris Berlin – Projection of Saint-Désir – l’Exil, 9’15” – Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles, Paris

The Crown Letter- festival KG+, Institut Français de Kyoto, Japan. 9 April to 8 May 2022

Contribution to the book ” Ecrans motiles”, by Sylvain Campeau, Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal. Trailer.

Contribution to the book “Annette Becker, un engagement”, Créaphis publisher

Winner of the Lea und Hans Grundig Prize 2021

Natacha Nisic could convince in the category art education with the collaborative Online-Project „The Crown Letter“, which has presented and connected artists from over the world during the Corona-Pandemie.

Von Leben in industrielandschaften II, Leopold Hoesch Museum, Düren, Germany, 12th December to 13th March 2022

The structural change in view

“Vom Leben in Industrielandschaften – Den Strukturwandel im Blick” is the second part of an exhibition project that began in fall/winter 2019/2020 with the exhibition “Vom Leben in Industrielandschaften – Eine fotografische Bestandsaufnahme” (A photographic stocktaking). This presentation was about approaching the manifestations of industrially shaped landscapes by means of the indexical and conceptual qualities of photography.

With: Bernd und Hilla Becher, Prunella Clough, Alice Creischer, Dieter Dressler, Günther Friedrich, Adolf Erbslöh, Olaf Karnik und Volker Zander, Aglaia Konrad, Carl Lohse, Antje Majewski, Wolfgang Mattheuer, Stephan Mörsch, Natacha Nisic, Silke Schatz, Carl Schütz, Wilhelm Schürmann, Franz W. Seiwert, Wilhelm Überrück, Karl Zerbe a.o.

The exhibition is a cooperation with the Brandenburg State Museum of Modern Art | Dieselkraftwerk Cottbus.

Quinzaine Photographique Nantaise, Histoire (s), 22th October to 22th November 2021

Presentation of the film Rather Die than Die, Atelier, Nantes.

Le rayon Vert – Hôtel Le belvédère, Cerbère, France, from 29th September to 30th November 2021

The Crown Letter – Biennal Sur – MAPI- Monte video

The Crown Letter – Biennal Sur – Centro Cultural- Cordoba, from 30 october to 30 december 2021

Environmental Awareness – Chapter 4: The Crown Letter

More than ever before, the pandemic crisis has brought to the fore the interdependence between human societies and the environment. Several voices reflected on this unexpected and unprecedented experience for humankind, giving rise to different actions. Among them is The Crown Letter, a work in progress presented as a collective diary of the diverse experiences in the life of the artists that make up this project, whose strong gender imprint has become one of its identity marks. The Crown Letter began in April 2020, at the onset of the Covid crisis, a time of widespread astonishment and despondency. French artist Natacha was convinced that there was an urgent need to come up with a global, collective response. Art could not be absent in the face of a catastrophe; it had to breathe and spread its oxygen in times of asphyxia. With neither resources nor institutional support, Natacha Nisic envisaged a website and immediately contacted artist friends from different countries and generations. A collective was soon organized with no leader or editorial line, driven by a common need that barely needs to be explained. While confinement affected everyone, it was clear to us all that it had a heavier impact on women, including artists. More than ever, they wanted to work and expose themselves in every sense to scrutiny and criticism. Through The Crown Letter they created a space to express and share what each of them and all of us were going through. They invented an “us” with open borders. Collectively, individualities were not blurred, but rather supported each other. As months went by, the dialogue became deeper and collective works were produced. The Crown Letter is presented as an online exhibition whose works, videos, photos, sculptures, poetry and prose are launched every week. It is a polyphonic manifesto with a tuning fork of the tempest, which over the weeks has become the intimate and collective diary of the pandemic from Mumbaï to Buenos Aires, Glasgow, London, Bucharest, Moscow, Paris…

The Crown Letter is a modest yet tenacious undertaking. It has made it past its first birthday and still continues. It will undoubtedly live on beyond the circumstances that brought it into existence.

The Crown Letter – Fondation Fiminco presented by Photodays, from 15th October to 27 november 2021

The Fondation Fiminco and Photo Days present The Crown Letter, an international collective of women artists, established by the French artist Natasha Nisic in April 2020, as an answer to the first wave of the Covid pandemic. Natasha Nisic started the project in order to help the production and diffusion of arts from women. As well as encourage exchanges, talks and solidarity, in a moment of their lives where their networks and visibility of their works were profoundly disturbed.Presented whitin the Photo Days exposition, it tries to account for the wealth of a project mixing generations of artists from various cultures through mediums as plurals as photography, drawings, txts, sounds, videos or performances.

With : SE Barnet, Maithili Bavkar, Anne Brunswic, Adriana Bustos, Claire Chevrier, Michelle Deignan, Liza Dimbleby, Sudha Padmaja Francis, Dettie Flynn, Claire-Jeanne Jézéquel, Kyoko Kasuya, Saviya Lopes, Ruth Maclennan, Ana Mendes, Maricarmen Merino, Aurelia Mihai, Manuela Morgaine, Natacha Nisic, Catherine Radosa, Luise Schröder, Esther Shalev-Gerz, Katja Stuke, Catalina Swinburn, Ivana Vollaro, Emma Woffenden.

Résister, reprendre – Les Chantiers de Marie-José Mondzain – La Commune, Théâtre d’Aubervilliers, from 25th to 26th September

Blackmail- Faire chanter – 10′ – “Faire chanter” is addressed to all spectators caught in the clutches of an economic machine whose artifices of representation use lures, virtual realities, and enchantments.this introduction to a tragi-comic opera in the process of being created is written as a tribute to Marie José Mondzain, a material for thinking about our economy of the senses and images.I owe to Marie José moments of sharing of an insane intensity, the color of which I would like to rediscover again, together, at La Commun.

L’Hyperfestival, Paris : Photodays presents The Crown Letter in two public spaces in the center of Paris:

Garden of the Tour Saint-Jacques, Paris 1, from August 1st to August 22nd

Garden Villemin, canal Saint-Martin, Paris 10, from August 1st to August 22nd

Loneliness 2, Basel Center, Videocity

“Les Endormi(e)s” (The Sleeping Ones), 2004
12:00 min, no sound

“What could be hiding behind these closed eyes? Vivid or peaceful dreams, images, colours, sounds… Or perhaps silence, a peaceful thoughtlessness, a removal from the world.
These moments of escape from the tumult of everyday life were filmed by Natacha Nisic in the Tokyo underground back in 2004. The Japanese are known for their frantic pace of work, their strict self-control, letting their personalities give way to efficiency and devotion to a company. Curator Andrea Domesle. To read more

To watch the video

Centre Pompidou, Muesum of Contempory art, collections. Catalogue de Gestes.

Installation view, 20 monitors, 20 Super 8 on video, 2020

Katalog der unbesungenen Gesten – Kolumne “Bild des Woche” – FAZ
von Katja Petrowskaja
“In unserer maskierten Zeit ist die Gestik intensiver geworden. Sie muss Sinn und Ausdruck der Mimik übernehmen. Aber auch die Hände halten soziale Askese: Sie dürfen andere nicht berühren. Die Künstlerin Natacha Nisic huldigt ihnen.”
To read more