Nadia Kaabi-Linke

Blandine Soulage

Venue

Usines Fagor

Lyon

Born 1978 in Tunis, Tunisia.
Lives and works in Berlin, Germany, and in Kyiv, Ukraine.

In her site-specific sculptures and installations, which explore migration-related narratives, Nadia Kaabi-Linke gives a physical presence to the invisible marks that events leave on people. For Mumble of the Homecoming Oak, the artist draws a parallel between the displacements endured by trees endemic to the Lyon area for economic reasons and the loss of local residents’ loved ones. As part of the Veduta programme, Nadia Kaabi-Linke created oak-leaf skeletons with residents who dedicated their leaves to a deceased person. She recorded the residents’ accounts and memories and converted them into vibrating sound beats that resonate through the wood of the branch. By animating the tree, the vibration of the voices and the bodies remind us how much all organic processes, people, animals, plants, and even after the individual death, relate through the metabolism of nature. In treating the various forms that death can take, Kaabi-Linke embraces afresh the tree-of-life symbol, common to many cultures around the world.