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Language, that is, the ability to express oneself and communicate, reflects the political, social and technological changes of our age. Our words, accents and expressions are sites of freedoms or constraints, which are revealed in the hybridization, transformation and adaptation of languages.
Paroles, Paroles brings together six artists, performers and poets – including a duo – whose artworks explore language in the visual arts, between written and oral language. The exhibition visual, by graphic designer Garine Gokceyan, reveals that certain discourses are rendered palatable in public. They are compared to women’s hair, traditionally destined to be disciplined. In the former synagogue of Delme, as for the works by Costanza Candeloro, Dorota Gaweda and Egle Kulbokaite, Marianne Mispelaëre, Hussein Nassereddine and Patrizia Vicinelli, they invoke diverse language practices through which discourse oscillates between plurilingualism and poetic language; between visual, stylised and olfactive forms. Added to this is the speech that circulates, that of the discussions between the public and the mediators at the art centre.
While it is not a new subject in the visual arts, language is expressed today through close ties with literature, poetry and other forms of discourse. Here, the words of the past help to evoke contemporary issues or, on the contrary, keep them at bay. Readings, performances, interviews – whether they effectively take place or are simply imagined – as well as visual poetry, are used to diversify language. They create a discrepancy with a logic of “foreshadowing effects” that confine the meaning of the words: magical words, tactical words that ring false, that seduce more than they say.
The art centre and artists would like to thank Lisa Andreani, Katia Gagnard, Associazione culturale Alberto Grifi and Ivan Grifi, Archivio Patrizia Vicinelli and Giò Castagnoli, Juliette Mirabito, Simone Stoll (Galerie Max Goelitz), Léa Vicente, Valentin Wattier, Guillaume Lemuhot and the municipal employees of Delme, Sihl Delta (Sebastian Stadler & Sarah Wiesendanger), and Martina Simeti.
This exhibition is supported by ProHelvetia.
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Costanza Candeloro (born in 1990 in Bologna, Italy) lives and works in Paris. She graduated from Haute école d'art et de design de Genève (HEAD). Candeloro employs writing as a generative element and research subject. Using deconstruction as a tool of enquiry, newly written or appropriated texts are transformed into words, signs, and symbols and then declined in the form of sculptures, installations, and performances, evolving into a continuous process of formation.
Amongst her most recent solo shows: Tout le temps de vie est temps de travail, Sihl Delta, Zurich (2024), Possessed is the Style, Ausstellungsraum Friedensgasse, Zurich (2024), C&G, Istituto Svizzero Milan (2023). Group exhibitions include: Brains, organized by Goton, Mimosa Echard, Aodhan Madden, Gaudel de Stampa, Paris; Renaissance, Museion, Bolzano (2024), Greetings, Galerie Hussenot, Paris (2023), Bodiesbodies, La Rada, Locarno (2023).
Dorota Gawęda (born in 1986 in Lublin, Poland) and Eglė Kulbokaitė (born in 1987 in Kaunas, Lithuania) are an artist duo based in Basel, Switzerland, who graduated from the Royal College of Art in London. They are also the co-founders of the Young Girl Reading Group (2013-2021). Influenced by feminist theory and fiction, horror films, and Eastern European folklore such as Baltic and Slavic oral traditions, their practice combines performances and image-making in which references to rituals and technologies blur the lines between humans and non-humans.
Most recently the duo presented solo exhibitions at MACA in Beijing (2025) and Haus für Kunst Uri (2025). Previously they have participated in exhibitions at The Renaissance Society in Chicago (2025), Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris (2024), Kunsthalle Basel (2024), Centre Pompidou, Paris (2023), Kunsthalle Mainz (2023), Centre Culturel Suisse in Paris (2022), among others. They were awarded the CERN Collide Award 2022, Allegro Prize (2022), and Swiss Performance Art Award (2021). Their work will be included in the 10th Biennale Gherdeina (2026).
Marianne Mispelaëre (born in 1987 in Bourgoin-Jallieu, France) is an artist based in Aubervilliers. She graduated from ÉSAL Épinal and HEAR-Strasbourg. Using drawing as her main medium, the artist produces and reproduces simple, precise, ephemeral gestures inspired by current and societal phenomena. She questions social relations, language and communication systems, the role of the legible and the invisible in our societies, and the porosity between an isolated act and its environment.
Her work has been exhibited in France and abroad; she was nominated for the Robert Schuman Art Prize (Trier, Germany, 2015), the Edward Steichen Award (Luxembourg, 2017), and the AWARE Prize (Paris, 2018). Marianne Mispelaëre is the winner of Prize by the City of Grenoble – Le Magasin CNAC (2016) and was awarded the Grand Prix at the Salon de Montrouge (2017). In 2013, she co-founded the publishing house Pétrole Éditions, which publishes the magazine TALWEG, among others.
Hussein Nassereddine (born in 1993 in Beirut, Lebanon) is a multidisciplinary artist living and working between Beirut, and Paris. His work in installation, writing, video, and performance originates from a practice around language that builds fragile monuments - some verbal, some sonic, some tactile - rooted in collective histories and resources of poetry, ruins, construction, and image-making.
His works, performances, and texts have been presented in museums, biennales, and institutions around the world, including the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale (2024), Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2023), Jameel Art Center (2022), MISC Athens (2021), and Beirut Art Center (2020), among others.
His first book, How to see the palace pillars as palm trees was published in Arabic in 2020 with Kayfa ta. The English translation was published in 2024.
Patrizia Vicinelli (1943–1991, Bologna) was an artist, poet, writer, and performer associated with the neo-avant-garde movements and “poesia totale”. She made her debut in the magazine Bab Ilu (1962), then moved to Rome (1963–1965), where she became involved with experimental theatre, cinema, and music. In 1966 she published à, a. A (Lerici), a collection of visual poetry, followed by a recorded performance released on vinyl (Marcatré, 1967; Futura. Poesia sonora, 1989). During her exile in Tangier in 1969, she produced Apotheosys of schizoid woman, an artist’s book published in 1979 in Tau/ma. After returning to Italy, she was imprisoned in Rebibbia (1977–1978), where she wrote and staged a feminist reinterpretation of Cenerentola. In the 1980s she worked on the unfinished novel Messmer, contributed to sound poetry (Baobab II, 1981), and published Non sempre ricordano (Aelia Lelia, 1985), a biographical and political poem. Between 1985 and 1987 she composed I fondamenti dell’essere, unpublished during her lifetime. She died in Bologna on 9 January 1991.